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Dryden hosts NACA IX Reunion
X-Press Editor Before NASA research pilots flew rocket-powered aircraft like the X-15, or the lifting body aircraft leading up to Enterprise's Approach and Landing Tests here, an organization seeking to redefine the aeronautical frontier chose to locate in the Mojave Desert. In the dusty, remote and sparsely populated desert there was a large dry lakebed. A small contingent from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) began operations here in 1946 to take advantage of the remote area that was a natural landing site for aircraft. Called the Muroc Flight Test Unit in 1947, the new organization became the High-Speed Flight Station (HSFS) in 1954. In September 2000, some of those aeronautical pioneers returned for a reunion of more than 200 former NACA employees from laboratories and facilities across the nation. Dryden's NACA Reunion organizer John McTigue, who himself was a NACA employee here in 1952, said the event was one of the most successful reunions he has attended. "Everyone I talk to said the support from Dryden was exceptional and it was. I really enjoyed seeing the people I have worked with through the years. I also made new friends. We worked at different centers, but we all come from the same background. We were raised during the depression and we have the same values. Making new friends is part of why we still have these reunions," he said. McTigue, who now is a NASA employee assisting with the X-34, spent most of his career at Dryden working on a number of projects ranging from the X-15 and the lifting bodies to the Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests and supercritical wing with many stops in between. Bob Champine, who was the sixth man to pierce the sound barrier in the X-1 and was one of the pilots of the D-558-I Skystreak and the D-558-II Skyrocket, returned to the Mojave Desert for the reunion. Champine had a special surprise waiting for him: a restored and pristine P-51 landed at Dryden. It was the same P-51D that Champine had piloted for the NACA in the 1940s. In 1959, the HSFS was renamed the NASA Flight Research Center, shortly after the NACA became NASA. Gene Kenner was one of the attendees and recalled his days here. "I was just out of high school and I was at the old NACA base. I was referred to the instrumentation shop, and I worked for Norm Hayes. I was an instrumentation mechanic, and I worked with other instrumentation mechanics on the first D-558-I. I also helped out on the X-1 Glamorous Glennis," he said. "I worked on X-1 instrumentation in a little wire cage in a corner of a hangar. Rebel (Harwell) said I can't work with the wind blowing and the sand blowing," he recalled. He first came to work for the NACA on Dec. 6, 1948. He was drafted in 1952 and returned to this facility in 1954. He retired from NASA in 1985 following a career during which he worked on the X-1, X-2, X-3, X-4, X-5, the D-558-I and the D-558-II, the lifting bodies and was the lead instrumentation engineering technician on the X-15 and F-8 Supercritical Wing. One of his recollections involved famed NACA pilot and Mach 2 buster Scott Crossfield, who did not attend the reunion. "Crossfield was piloting an F-100 and it came through the hangar wall. I was behind the wall," he said. Early in his career he recalled another memorable event. "We had just started working on the D-558-I and I was following the instrumentation truck. I looked back and saw a rocket head. ‘What a souvenir,' I thought. I put it in the truck and later showed it to an inspector. I picked it up to show it to him and his eyes were this big. He said ‘take the rocket head back to the truck, take it back to the lakebed and lay it down very carefully.' I remember driving it back and realizing what I had done. It really got my attention," he said. Edwin Edwards has fond memories of his days as an NACA employee. He was a crewmember of the X-1 No. 2 and later crew chief of the X-1E that is displayed in front of 4800 and memorializes the early days of the Center. Edwards still can rattle off every technical aspect of the X-1 and the aircraft that air launched it. He recalled when he, crew chief Dick Payne and crewmember Bud Rogers assisted in launching the X-1 No. 2 from a B-29. "We were launching from 30,000 feet and the X-1 weighed 12,500 pounds fully loaded in a 4,000-pound bomb rack. The rack was obviously overloaded. We dropped the X-1 by manually pulling the safety pin out with a cord," he recalled. "(Scott) Crossfield was in the X-1. Dick Payne pulled too soon and the pin was jammed on the first try at launching the X-1. Dick got a hammer out of the tool box and walked onto the catwalk above the X-1," he said. "At about the same time, Scottie was told we were going to abort the flight. I saw Scottie turn the radio off with his hands in his lap at 30,000 feet. Dick still was on the catwalk above him and the X-1 because the B-29 unfortunately could not land with the X-1 attached. So Dick beat the pin out with a punch and hammer and the airplane dropped. He (Scottie) looked surprised, but he made a good flight out of it; he got it (the engine) lit," Edwards said. Another reunion attendee was Nancy Dryden Baker, daughter of the Center's namesake Hugh L. Dryden. Hugh Dryden was the NACA's director of research beginning in 1947. He was internationally known as an aeronautical scientist. Baker learned from her famous father the scientific way to feed bread to ducks – including the trajectory the crumbs should go to get to the ducks. However, when she was asked "Who's Dr. Hugh Dryden?" by reporters, the answer was easy: "That's my daddy." She was close to her father and interested in some of his science, but she said it wasn't until her father's cataract surgery that she really gained interest and insight in science. "The year he had the cataract surgery it drove him crazy that he could not read scientific journals. I was 11 or 12 and I read to him from the journals until I came to a word I did not know. He would ask me to spell it out, and he would help me with those words. I was fascinated by the manuals he brought home and one evening he brought home documentation on the launch of one of the monkeys," she said. "He always told me ‘The airplane and I grew up together.' He knew one of the Wright Brothers, I think it was Wilbur, and he knew John Glenn. My favorite recollection was when I was teaching third grade. He had me move the desks into a configuration the night before and give him a seating chart. He explained the procedures to launch and brought in John Glenn. My father had to leave before answering all their questions because he was called back to the White House. He wrote responses to all the kids' questions in long hand." Baker felt honored when the Center was renamed in her father's honor in 1976. "This was the most appropriate Center to carry his name because his passion was aeronautics and high speed research," she said. |
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Responsible NASA Official: John Childress For questions, contact: Dryden Web Group Page Curator:WD-Team Modified: October 23, 2000 |
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