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This is a NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project transcript of astronaut James A. McDivitt, interviewed by Doug Ward at Elk Lake, Michigan, on 29 June 1999. McDivitt talks about flying F-86s in Korea, test pilot work at Edwards, and his first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. He also covers turning down Dyna-soar, joining NASA in 1962 and learning to be an Apollo Program Manager. He describes the Change Board and says decisions were not second-guessed.
“Borman”5 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-63 electrical contacts throughout the lunar module. And they’d work one day and wouldn’t work the next day. So, finally we decided we had to go back to plugs. And they—at that time, the lunar module was pretty far through testing. We’d been testing it for a year or so. Decided to send it down to the Cape, run it through the flow down there, and then put it in the Smithsonian [National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.], which is where it is now. So, then I went over to the LM-3 vehicle. At that time, that put a gap in the flight; and they—NASA management just decided to fly another flight that wasn’t in the plan, that would be out around the Moon and they’d come back down. And so— WARD: That became Apollo 8. MCDIVITT: —that became Apollo 8. And that wasn’t a lettered mission. When that got stuck in there, we then—and that would’ve been the E mission that that crew was the— came down there. So, then we combined all the D and E mission objectives into the flight I was flying, which we still called D. We then just eliminated E. So, we took one out and put one in, and went on with that. So, then after that the crew assignments stayed pretty much the same. And no more jockeying around on the spacecraft either. WARD: And, of course, all of that was going on, at the same time, or at least in part in parallel with the recovery from the fire— MCDIVITT: That’s correct. WARD: —and you and Frank Borman, along with George [M.] Low who had been named the Apollo Program Manager after Shea left really carried a tremendous amount of that
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