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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.
“Mission Control”9 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-71 today. That’s the number one priority program.” Anyway, a couple of months later it was canceled. And then I had an opportunity to go be the Secretary of the Space Council, and the Air Force wanted me to come back and do some other things. And then I had an opportunity to fly command Apollo 13. And then George Low called me up and said, “Jim, I’d like to talk to you.” So, I went over to talk to him. And he said, “I’m only going to be the Program Manager for one more flight. And after that—” or the lunar landing. “As soon as the lunar landing takes place,” he says, “I’m going to leave here.” He said, “I’ve been offered a job as the [NASA] Deputy Administrator. And we can’t talk about that now, because it’s a political appointee job” and all that junk. “But,” he said, “I’d like to have you replace me as the Program Manager.” Hmm. I said, “Well, let me think about that. That’s more interesting than some of these other things.” And so, I went home and talked to my wife about it. She suggested I fly the Apollo 13 flight. And anyway, I thought about it for a long time. And finally I decided that that’s what I wanted to do. So, I went and told him, “Yeah, I’d do that.” And so— WARD: Be the Program Manager. MCDIVITT: Yeah, I’d be the Program Manager. But we couldn’t—but we had to disguise it in a way that it wasn’t obvious. And so, I took a job which we created called the Deputy Program Manager for Lunar Exploration, or something like that. So, in that job then I led the team that sort of redesigned the command module and lunar module to do the lunar exploration stuff that we did on 15, 16, and 17. And then as soon as we landed on Apollo 11, we were going to make the transition. And then because of the political appointee stuff, it took—it dragged on and on and
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