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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.
“Nevers”36 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-76 WARD: Even though— MCDIVITT: I had to do that with the accident investigation team on Apollo 13 one time, too. When we got Apollo 13 back, we’d all been up—not all of us, but almost all of us had been up for, what? four or five days. And so, I sent everybody home and said we’d reconvene, I think, on Monday. I think we landed on Saturday or Friday. I don’t remember which. “Everybody go home and get rested, and we’ll start the accident investigation.” I got a call from NASA Headquarters in my office just before I left, saying, “Well, we’ve got to reconvene—we’ve got to convene that accident board right now!” I said, “You guys got to be out of your minds! You know, some of us haven’t had any sleep for three or four days!” “Well, we’ve got to do it. You know, politically, we can’t put this thing off. We’ve got to get on top of it.” And so on. Anyway, I brought the guys back. And then a few days later, we got this super team that came down that was headed up by a fellow who was the NASA Center Director at Lewis [Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio], I forget his name now [Bruce T. Lundin]. And they came down and with a bunch of Center Directors and Air Force Generals and—I was still a Colonel at that time. And so, this was going to be the big super investigating team. Well, we had our own investigating team of hundreds of people. And so, I used to have a senior management accident review meeting once a day. And then the guys led by Don [Donald D.] Arabian were—had a meeting all the time. And they would get together once a day, and then—and the RCS [Reaction Control System] guys would talk to the electrical guys, and the electrical guys would talk to the inertial guidance, and they’d all be at the same meeting. They’d get up and make a report. Everybody then got caught up to date. And this Center Director wanted to know if—or told me he was going to have his team sit in on those
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