5 A World Record
As good luck would have it, I was scheduled to
fly the next zoom on the afternoon. Based on
Jack’s success, I felt ready for full zoom, from
past flying experience and my aeronautical
engineering, as well as the training and
simulations at ARPS, so was delighted for the
opportunity to go first.
I should like to add that had Jack chosen to do
so, he had the right to have rescheduled and
gone before me, once again pointing out just how
kind and unselfish a man he was.
The flight to pull-up was routine, except that I
went to Mach 2.2 this time and the 3.5 g
sustained to 70 degree pitch was a first, but I
had done it a hundred times in my mind.
Visualization is the salvation of a test pilot,
because practice is not possible on critical
events. As a result, I was convinced that I
would be doing what I had planned to do.
When the AST left the sensible atmosphere, it
was no longer an airplane but a space vehicle,
and I had expected that, but what was actually
happening I had never anticipated. I felt like a
cat chasing its tail, which runs the other way
just when he thinks it’s caught. Every time I
did something to gain control I just as suddenly
lost it in some other motion in another axis
than what I had just corrected, and every bit as
bad as it had been before. This was outside my
understanding of space controls, based on
simulations or theory and I felt like I was
literally fighting for my life.
I knew in space control that I would have to
nullify every command with its opposite equal to
make it stop and then recover to position with
another complete cycle, but there was no
rationale for immediate initiation of a second,
unwanted, axis of motion with each correction.
The unexpected is expected in experimental test,
but this was beyond my imagination. I knew,
when I took off that I could fly it, but I
damned near couldn’t even control it!
I might have wished I had not zoomed so high,
had I the time to make a wish. The airplane was
nearly uncontrollable from the time I got to the
point in the climb where I had to rely solely on
the reaction control system (RCS) for
controlling the craft, until what seemed an
eternity later, when it again became an airplane
in the 70 degree dive toward earth. I fought
every inch of the way to avoid complete loss of
control, but not only in the most difficult,
pitch axis, in all three! That was
incomprehensible based on my training, and
highlighted by adding a third serious problem,
roll, where I expected virtually no work to do.
I landed convinced this airplane could not be
used as a trainer, without significant analysis,
redesign and changes, an opinion I wrote up in
the aircraft log and announced to Lockheed. I
had been able to retain control but couldn’t see
any way to improve significantly with practice
because of the inexplicability of the motions
and my margins from complete loss of control
were small. I expected and was ready to cope
with zero stability, which I fully understood
and even ready for negative stability possible
on the climb during transition from air to
space. I had experienced both in a variable
stability F-101. But cross-coupling outside the
atmosphere shouldn’t exist, and this was exactly
as if an airplane’s inertial cross-coupling
had been added to the equation, but that was
impossible outside the region of aerodynamics.
Not until some days later did I find out that
all three axes of the RCS had been wired
incorrectly. As a result, I was introducing the
same rate of a disturbance on another axis as I
was demanding on the one I intended to correct.
Even the gyroscopic coupling effects, we were
unaware of at the time, were compounded by that
hardware problem. There was no wonder it was
beyond any expectations or logic.
With that news I was very pleased that I was
able to maintain control in spite of that very
significant glitch with all three axes of the
control system. After all, except for
understanding of the theory, it was my first
actual use of reaction controls. Maybe even
more importantly, it proved something during
test that we could never have discovered about
the ultimate capability of the AST. This unique
aircraft, put together so austerely actually
exhibited a great deal of margin, which was a
great safety plus for the planned training.
There is no doubt that the excess thrust
levels, resulting in quick response against
unusual variation in attitude had a lot to do
with my success in saving a potential disaster.
Even if I encountered the situation in a
simulator of today’s sophistication, where a
“crash” would be harmless, I suspect it would
have taken many, many attempts and crashes to
begin discerning a pattern of logic in the
misconnection. On this flight I had nary a clue
and was barely hanging in!
The ground stations, radar and visual (Askania
System) were extremely accurate and recorded
my peak altitude at 118, 860 feet. This new
record altitude exceeded the Russians, who held
the official mark of 113,800 feet, by more than
the margin of 3% required to set an official
world record. Such marks required a protocol for
certification, even though the Edwards tracking
systems were most qualified in the world for
precise accuracy of altitude and even attitude,
as well. Pre-approval by the Federation
Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) in Paris had
not been requested by the Air Force, though
Lockheed had paid the license fee. Who ever
said the French were cooperative, but this was
not their fault?
It was one of the most interesting and
satisfying flights of my flying career, in part
because it was so unique, and the events so
unexpected, but also because it made me feel for
the first time like an experimental test pilot,
one of my flying goals. That was my last flight
with Lockheed.
Not until recently, I learned that Jack flew
that same airplane the afternoon of that same
day I wrote it up, which was logged as a very
routine flight for directional stability. This
strikes me as very strange because that was well
within the regime already tested on # 756, the
designated stability test bird. Clearly, that
flight was a post-maintenance checkout of the
corrections Lockheed maintenance had made on the
RCS control problem that I had encountered.
The very morning after that, 23 Oct, Jack also
went to the full 70-degree climb for his first
time and reached 118,400 feet, only 400 short of
my record but suffered full loss of control over
the top and fell out of control for 85,000 feet
before he successfully recovered control and
landed.
I remained unaware of Jack’s max zoom, until
recently, when I read his biography, written
after his death to cancer. He did tell me later
that he fell out of a zoom, but I assumed it was
one of his lower altitude flights, possibly the
one the afternoon I completed mine, since I was
unaware that he didn’t zoom then. He also
informed me that Lockheed tested the RCS and
discovered it was improperly connected, so I was
satisfied to continue the project without any
further actions.
Jack and his big boss, Jack Real, one of the
long-time great test executives of Lockheed,
came to Edwards and presented me a plaque for my
record flight, a couple of months later and
Jack, such an unassuming guy, never mentioned
that he virtually tied my record.
It seems impossible that both he and the company
would have ignored my write-up and flown the
airplane, twice, before finding their wiring
error, which could have been noticed in any
careful ground firings, and I don’t believe
either would have allowed it.
I recently read a very brief biography of Jack
and learned he studied basic engineering at
the
University
of Saskatchewan in 1945 and the Empire Test
Pilots School (British) in 1952. Obviously,
based on the times, neither of these would have
included studies related with space flight and
controls, as our own TPS did not, even in 1963.
I recently discussed Jack Woodman with NASA
astronaut Vance Brand (Commander and Pilot of
multiple Shuttle flights) who was a fine young
Lockheed test pilot, working with Jack at that
time. He described Jack in glowing terms, an
opinion I share with Vance. He went on to say
Jack did not delve into engineering aspects in
detail. He was more inclined to rely on the
engineers for a test plan, study and understand
it, and then worked hard to perform it well. It
never occurred to me until later that the
technically and mathematically inclined Lockheed
engineers, who designed and sized the RCS, may
not have envisioned how it related to piloting
the AST, but assumed Jack would relate to them,
instead. I conclude it’s most probable that
Jack’s unfamiliarity with the dynamics of space
flight and control systems caused him to lose
control of the AST, even though the wiring
problem had been corrected before the flight and
the RCS performed properly. That conclusion is
supported by another such event, which occurred
less than two months later, with another test
pilot who did not understand the uniqueness of
space dynamics and control.
After the RCS was corrected, I never had any
problem with the RCS when flying within the
recommended max profile, until I intentionally
exceeded the instrument limitations. The AST
was not easy to fly but was designed only to
train technically expert test pilots, and it
performed as intended. I did note a continuing
coupling of axes in yaw and pitch, but not of
significant magnitude after that first flight.
The aircraft was exceptionally well qualified
for the intended mission.
I never had benefit of data collected from my
flights, or anyone else’s until after I had
flown my final
max zoom, however, when data were finally
reduced on the last two zoom flights ever flown,
those by famous test pilot Chuck Yeager, the
gyroscopic effects, which couple them, were
identifiable in his data from those two flights,
which will be discussed further. Finally,
I understood why I was always having to work at
controlling yaw so much more than I had
expected.
Another of my recent discoveries is merely of
incidental historical interest. Jack’s direct
boss in Lockheed test was Ed Brown, who later
tested the zero launch take-off (ZEL) which
launched the German F-104G, from a stationary
truck with a large jet-assisted-takeoff rocket
attached to it. Ed flew his only flight a day
after Jack’s final incident. That flight may
have been a sop to a supervisor, who wanted to
try it out, but who also remembered Jack’s
difficulty just the day before, since he quit
zoom attempt and flew only to 67,000 feet,
meaning an abort almost at the very start of
pull-up. Joint testing thus ended on
24 Oct 1963. |