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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 12-80 MCDIVITT: Well, people in those days didn’t appreciate how difficult and dangerous it was! I mean, we made it look way too easy. When I got into the program, I figured we’d try five, six, eight, ten times before we ever had a successful one. I had no idea in the world it would run as smoothly as it did. You know, that’s why we had the lettered missions. We had—we were going to go on C until we got C done. And then we were going to go on D until we got it done. Then to E. And then F. And then G. The fact that we didn’t even do one of them, I mean, yeah, it was extremely successful. WARD: At the time the crews were assigned, do you think that Deke Slayton, NASA management had a strong inkling that Neil Armstrong’s crew would be the one to land on the Moon? MCDIVITT: I don’t think so. I think there was a—I think when Joe Shea was there—I don’t know this as a fact, but I think when Joe Shea was there, there was a certain alignment of who was going to fly what, when, that might have been different than what Deke thought. I’m not sure Deke ever knew that. And we can’t ask them today, can we? Then after the fire and Joe left, I think George Low—we can’t ask him either, can we?—didn’t have—didn’t want to take on that responsibility. And it sort of went over to Deke. And then I think he just put those crews together, and they were just going to spring up and it was going to be more happenstance than anything else. And, you know, and if we tried these flights a number of times and they weren’t working, we wouldn’t—we might not have landed until Apollo 20! And so, nobody knew until we got started getting close. And that’s why I said after I flew on Apollo 9, it looked like I wasn’t going to get a shot at that because we were being too successful! I should have screwed up Apollo 9, hunh?
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