Documents / Document
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 12-98 to get you guys. You, you know, you’ve pretty much had it.” So, I submitted my resignation from the Air Force and into NASA. I had to send it to Deke, and then Deke had to send it to Dr. Gilruth, I guess. And anyway, by the time we got through with all that kind of stuff, it took a while and I was getting close to flying on Gemini IV, and I thought, “Well, you know, this is getting too close. It’s going to look like sour grapes if I let this thing go forward.” Because by the time it went through the Air Force, it would be like I was resigning two days before I was going to fly on Gemini IV. So, I thought, “Ah, I’ll pull the resignation out and I’ll submit it after the flight!” So, I pulled the resignation, and then we go fly our flight. And after the flight President [Lyndon B.] Johnson called us out on the aircraft carrier. And so, we chatted with him. And then when we got back to Houston, we had just landed at Ellington and we’d only been there on the ground for 15 or 20 minutes, when somebody runs out from the operations shack and says, “Hey, the President’s on the phone and wants to talk to you two guys.” So, we go in there and get on the phone. And he says, “Boys, I would like to have you all come down to the ranch and spend the weekend here.” So, we chatted. And he said, “I got to give you a medal, you know. Come on down here. We’ll have a good time.” And so, Ed and I looked at each other; and we—by that time, we’d been together so long we could read each other’s mind. And I’m thinking, “I think Ed wants to go to the White House. I know I don’t.” He said, “Well, Mr. President, you know, we’d really like to go to the White House.” He said, “Oh, hell man! If you want to go to the White House, yeah, that’d be great. We’ll go to the White House! I just thought we’d have a hell of a good time down here.” I said, “Well, I got another idea. Why don’t you come here and visit us?” I said, “We’ll go to the White House if you’ll invite us, and you can come here to the Manned Spacecraft Center.” I said, “You know, it wasn’t just Ed and me that did all this. It
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 110 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.