The Last Man on the Moon Read online

  I didn’t really care, because all I wanted to do was fly. I was young, eager, had no wife, no kids, or anything I really wanted to do more than be a naval aviator, so I said “Yes” and signed the papers. Many others did not, however, and the Navy ran out of students at the Memphis Naval Air Station. When they came around asking for volunteers, I saw an opportunity. The downside was that I would bypass going out to the ship, when landing on a carrier had been what I really wanted to do all along. Nevertheless, it was a shortcut to getting my wings and I took the chance.

  Ordinarily, I would have continued to fly the prop-driven T-28 for another six to eight weeks of advanced training to learn instrument and all-weather flying, then slowly move into jets. But less than a month after going to Memphis, I was in the cockpit of a jet fighter, an old T-33 Shooting Star, which rushed me quietly and quickly right upstairs, bursting through the clouds to the blue skies at thirty thousand feet. Going to Tennessee was one of the best decisions I ever made. There was a certain urgency now, for only a month before getting my wings in Memphis, a 184-pound shiny steel ball with four long prongs that looked like metal whiskers sweeping along behind it was launched by the Soviet Union and became the first man-made object ever to reach orbit. They called it Sputnik, and every time it passed over our country, transmitting beeping radio signals from outer space, it told us that the rules of the Cold War had changed. I would sometimes stand out in the darkness, look up into the Tennessee night sky, and watch for the little sucker, knowing I could never see it out there, a faint speck among the stars. How did they do that? Proving it was no fluke, the USSR launched Sputnik 2 into orbit on November 3, 1957, with Laika, a dog, as a passenger. So three weeks before I was even given my Navy wings, a Russian mutt had flown farther, faster, higher, and longer than anyone in history. I had never even thought about a dog going into space, much less a man, and certainly not me.

  As my dad watched with pride, Mom pinned the wings of gold on my dress blue uniform on November 22, 1957, only ten months after I had begun to fly, instead of the normal eighteen months. I had won the prize, but the game wasn’t yet over. I was a Naval aviator, but hadn’t yet finished flight training, nor had I landed on a carrier.

  WHILE THE SOVIET UNION was successfully launching satellites, the United States was trying, and failing, to get into the space race. While the Soviets launched in total secrecy, we broadcast everything live on grainy black and white television and watched our first attempt to fling a U.S. satellite into orbit blow up right before our eyes.

  Success finally came when we turned to our Germans. Von Braun had been saying for years that he and his team could put up a satellite, and do it before the Russians, but he was hooted down by rivals. The Air Force wanted control of any space program, as an extension of its aircraft testing at Edwards Air Force Base. So did the Navy, which was preparing its Vanguard rockets. The Germans, unfortunately, worked for the Army. Jealousy ruled.

  Using the Jupiter-C, a missile that was a close cousin to the V-2 rockets they built for Hitler, the German engineers answered the call. Almost four months after Sputnik broke the barrier, Explorer 1, only seven feet long and carrying eleven pounds of scientific equipment and two radios, went into orbit from a little-known spit of Florida coast known as Cape Canaveral. The United States was in the game.

  YOU AIN’T NUTHIN’ BUT a houn’ dawg! must have heard Elvis Presley’s newest hit song fifty times as I drove from Memphis back to Pensacola after Christmas of 1957. I disagreed with Elvis, for I felt myself to be quite a bit more than any dog, even Laika, who had died in orbit after a last meal of lethally drugged food. I not only had my wings, but had attained the exalted rank of lieutenant (junior grade), which meant I was no longer a lowly ensign, although I was still damned close. The promotion is so automatic that you can’t avoid it unless you die. Nevertheless, I proudly wore the new emblem of rank, a single silver bar, when I went home to Bellwood for the holidays.

  On the serious side, my dad’s health had begun to deteriorate and I was worried about him. I wanted my parents to know that I truly appreciated everything they had done to make my dream come true. “I’m doing my best to make you proud of me because I owe it all to you and Mom,” I wrote from Pensacola.

  I STRAPPED ON A single-seat F9F Panther, a Korean War vintage aircraft that wore patches over old bullet holes, and for the first time was given the controls of a strange plane that did not have a backseat. They gave me a plane, a book about how to fly it, a bit of classroom instruction, stood back, and said, “Okay, it’s yours.” That’s when you knew you had arrived as an aviator. I had reached another plateau, and although I still had not landed on a carrier, I was getting closer.

  Gone were the days of a T-28’s growling propeller and the poky pace of training aircraft. The Panther was a real jet fighter, and I was surprised by how quiet it was. The howling engine was far to the rear, only a muffled whisper inside my flight helmet. This sleek, dark blue machine responded to my slightest touch and moved as if it were a part of me. The cockpit was right on the nose of the aircraft and gave me the sense of gliding through the sky. I found I could use gentle, fingertip control, not realizing at the time how important that sense of instinctive flying would be when I found myself atop a Saturn V rocket or landing the lunar module on the Moon. The real kick at the time was knowing I was riding the tip of a very deadly arrow.

  Danger was always present in such an unforgiving profession, and even during advanced training, some young pilots died while trying to master the same sort of birds I was flying. I didn’t let that bother me because I had the confidence that I could handle this airplane business. Crashing only happened to other people, generally because they did something foolish. Hell, I guess we all made mistakes, but some of us were just luckier than others.

  My flying record was spotless, right up to the final flight of my training command career. Every flight was graded, and a poor performance was scored as a “down,” with the chance to fly the mission again. From the first time I crawled into a cockpit, I had never even come close to a “down.” Those were for lesser mortals, or so I thought. That changed on the final flight, when four students, one named Cernan, took our Panthers up on a routine gunnery mission, the target being a long banner towed by another airplane. Since we were feeling pretty good about ourselves, we decided to shoot that bastard to ribbons, and shredded that long piece of cloth in a record shoot. We zoomed over, under and around the instructor’s tow plane, firing live ammunition and bouncing him rather wildly. Being a Marine, the man had absolutely no sense of humor and was not impressed with our outstanding work. He gave us all downs and ordered us to refly the mission the next day, which let us go cavorting through the skies again. This time we were more courteous, so as not to upset him.

  I graduated third in my class and the Navy offered me a choice of assignments. I selected single-engine jet attack because I wanted to fly low and fast and drop bombs on things, and picked the West Coast because touring exotic Asia sounded pretty neat.

  In February, 1958, I threw everything I owned into the trunk of my Chevy convertible, tuned in some rock and roll and headed across the country for San Diego, home of the Miramar Naval Air Station, Fighter-town U.S.A. The place would be known to a future generation by two words: Top Gun. On arriving, looking up to see Navy fighters and attack jets climbing into the blindingly bright California sunshine or circling to land, I realized I probably would not be the king of the skies out here. A rookie with absolutely no seniority, my initial job was the boring one of Squadron Duty Officer, a housekeeping post to answer telephones, shuffle papers, and make sure the roof didn’t fall in. On my very first day, it almost did. The first earthquake I had ever experienced rumbled through, shaking the hangar, making the runway ripple and scaring the hell out of the Squadron Duty Officer. It was an omen of things to come, a warning that my life would not be routine, and God’s way of saying, “Welcome to the real world, you nugget.”

  5

  Al
bino Angels

  I AM A TOUGH GUY, cracking through the California sky at 500 knots, only fifty feet above the lizards and the cactus on the desert floor, totally focused on putting the nuclear bomb strapped to the belly of my FJ4-B Fury precisely on target. That means hitting the checkpoint at 300 knots, building steam to 500 and hauling back on the controls, the pressure of four times the weight of gravity pushing me against the seat like a pancake and monkeying with my eyeballs. I head straight up in an Idiot Loop, punch the button and throw the bomb. Roll the Fury into a dive and push the throttle through the firewall, forcing the airplane to go faster than its designers could have imagined. Then I hug the ground and burn out of there as the bomb loops over the top of its own parabola and begins its lethal fall back to Earth. My job now is to outrun the shock waves and blinding light of the coming nuclear blast, rings of immense power that could shake me out of the sky. Will I make it? Who knows? Thank God, I never had to find out.

  Such was the life of an attack pilot during the Cold War. On this particular day, zooming through the clear blue in southern California, it is only a practice run, the bomb a dummy and the path to the bull’s-eye marked by two-by-two timbers stuck into the rocks and sand. Each stick is twelve feet tall and buried two feet deep, leaving only ten feet sticking up. I head into my bomb run, and slip groundhog low to improve accuracy and, in the event of a real attack, evade radar. If they can’t see me, they can’t shoot me. I’m flying so low that when a pole appears, I jump the plane over it, like taking hurdles on a running track. It’s fun, but a little dumb, something only a kid just out of flight training would do.

  The jet is pure, smooth speed and the ground swishes past in vague patterns of brown as I watch my instruments and adjust for a buffeting wind. Thwack! Jolt! Going exactly 500 knots, my highballing Fury tears a foot off the top of one of the marking posts. I feel the slap and know I have hit something, but the plane is still flying and no warning lights flash, so I rise to a safer altitude and head off to land at El Centro, where the purring Fury puts me down safely.

  The ground crew and other pilots walk out for a look as I unstrap and climb out with great nonchalance, and they shake their heads in amazement. One of the nose gun ports is clogged solid with a chunk of wood jammed in so tightly that it might have been carved to the shape of the hole. A gash has been ripped down the right side, from nose to wing, metals panels have been peeled loose, and powdery sawdust leaks from beneath them.

  I had come within six inches of jamming that post down the throat of my engine, which would have resulted in a catastrophic explosion. This was the sort of thing that happened to other pilots, never to me. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had done something really dumb and should be lying dead in the desert, entombed in a pile of flaming wreckage. It is okay to make a mistake, but unacceptable to be stupid.

  My squadron buddies hustled me off to the Officers’ Club for some serious drinking and gave me a crude scarlet banner bearing the legend: “Order of the Bent Pole—Limited to Living, Low-flying Aviators.” Naturally, I laughed it off because the unwritten law was to show absolutely no fear. In the past months, I had convinced myself that I was invincible, invisible, and bulletproof. I was still a gung-ho flier, but from that day on, I carried a new respect for my dangerous profession.

  SAN DIEGO, 1958. I’M in heaven. Hot Mexican food and cold cerveza, surfboard dawns and tanned California girls. Sure, baby, I fly jets. They didn’t need to know I was only a nugget, a rookie who had just almost busted my ass.

  When I arrived at Miramar Naval Air Station, I still had not landed on an aircraft carrier, a rare situation that was cured when I was assigned to Attack Squadron VA-126, call sign, Tough Guys. After practicing on runways bearing the painted outline of a carrier deck, they put me in an A-4 Skyhawk and told me to fly out to the USS Ranger, the third supercarrier ever built, with plenty of space on that angled deck. So why did CVA-61 look so small from my cockpit? And why did it keep jinking around like that? How can a big carrier bounce around in still water like a toy?

  On my first approach, the ship seemed to fall into the trough of a wave. I stayed with the voice of the landing signal officer, my eyes on the meatball, a dancing ball of light that showed my glide slope, and reduced my speed to just above a stall. Suddenly, the Ranger ramp flashed beneath me, the tailhook snagged a wire, and I jammed the throttle to full power as the Skyhawk smacked to a jerking, twisting stop, angry at being told to fly while being held motionless by a steel cable. I was thrown forward against my harness hard enough to rattle my molars, having gone from 125 knots to flat zero in a blink. Good job, Cernan, now go out and do it eleven more times.

  Freed from the cable, I taxied forward, the deck crew hooked the plane to a steam catapult, and I tossed a salute to the Cat officer, the traditional signal that the pilot is ready to go. A burst of power snapped my head back, the catapult flung me back to 125 knots and the Ranger was instantly at my six o’clock. By the end of that day of shipboard takeoffs and landings, I had my carrier qualifications and could hold my head up in righteous pride. Now I was a real Naval aviator. Hey, baby, I fly jets.

  I was so wrapped up in my own world at Miramar that I was hardly aware that the outer space satellite derby was accelerating. Rocket launchings had become commonplace.

  In November of 1958, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) was converted into a new set of initials and NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was born. That same month, I was reassigned to VA-113, the Stingers, part of Air Group 11 on the USS Shangri-La, to fly Skyhawks, the deft little single-engine attack planes we affectionately called Scooters, which had the singular purpose of delivering bombs and rockets to the enemy.

  I set out on my first cruise in the western Pacific, known as WestPac, in March 1959, sailing away on a boat laden with thousands of men and more than fifty aircraft, to help patrol a world in which worrisome things were happening. Some five thousand American Marines had gone into Lebanon to brace the elected government; rebels led by Fidel Castro were fighting their way toward Havana, and a guerrilla war was taking root in the newly divided Vietnam.

  So we went to sea as Cold Warriors, to hone our deadly skills and show the flag, just as the old American gunboats had done on the rivers of China. In the Straits of Formosa, parallel to the coast of China, we frequently encountered flights of Chinese MiGs heading the other way, passing close enough to see their pilots. We were all armed to the teeth and ready for a fight. A few years ago, in a much-altered world political climate, I flew into Shanghai for the first time, arriving at a military airfield aboard a commercial passenger jet. I looked out the window during the approach and recognized some landmarks. I’d seen this place before! I realized that I was landing at Ground Zero of one of my targets back in those nasty, nuclear days.

  ON FIRST ARRIVING IN the wardroom of the Shangri-La, I looked around. Several squadrons of pilots were aboard, flying planes bearing names such as Demons, Cougars, Skywarriors, Skyhawks, Skyraiders, and Tigers. Fifteen to eighteen pilots in each squadron, top of the line stick-and-rudder men, and we knew some of us would never reach port again. Maybe an ejection seat would malfunction, or a catapult might lose power and the pilot would ride his plane into the water just ahead of the charging carrier, or someone would simply fly into a mountain or the water. You could not declare yourself safe until you landed on the carrier, taxied to the elevator, rode down to the hangar deck, then, finally, climbed from your plane.

  Life settled into military routine once we were out in the Pacific, and I gained more experience with each passing day, flying over open oceans and safely coming back to the ship. Land or splash, that was the choice, and a splash was usually followed by a quiet memorial service on the flight deck, frequently with no body recovered. Complicating matters a bit was the fact that the Shangri-La wasn’t the same sort of supercarrier as the big, fat Ranger. She was a 27-Charlie class, a made-over straight deck carrier that now had a truncate
d, angled deck. The landing area was shorter than a football field, looked absolutely minuscule in dirty weather, and was damned near invisible at night. Take a deep breath and follow the meatball.

  Skip Furlong and Fred Baldwin, squadron buddies from Miramar, were also aboard the Shang, and we forged firm friendships as we shared the dangers of carrier aviation, drank Flaming Hookers and raised general hell in ports of call from Tokyo to Singapore and other Seventh Fleet playgrounds.

  One reason my confidence was so high was that Zeke Cormier taught a couple of us how to really fly. Not how to merely pilot a plane, but how to slide our powerful Skyhawks through the heavens and paint the sky with bright, aerobatic patterns.

  Zeke was the air group boss aboard the Shangañer a tour as skipper of the Navy’s legendary Blue Angels flight demonstration team and that handsome Italian stud looked as though he had stepped right out of a recruiting poster. He wanted to do more than fly practice missions, so he pulled together three of us nuggets (who didn’t know any better than to go flying with Zeke) and created the Albino Angels. Zeke in the lead, me on one wing, Baldy on the other, and Dick “Spook” Weber, a skinny and pale aviator, in the slot. Zeke taught us the fancy moves, and we soon were flying precision demonstrations throughout Asia. At first the Navy loved it, but eventually ordered us to change our name to prevent conflict with the Blue Angels. So we performed instead under our squadron colors, the Stingers, and still had more requests for appearances than we could fill.