posted 08-28-2022 05:48 AM               

Space Cover 665: Fred Haise and Some X-15 Detective Work

First and foremost, just to quell any adrenaline surges that you may have had when reading the title above – no, Fred Haise did NOT fly the X-15. But he did fly some X-15 support missions prior to his selection as an Apollo astronaut…

Above is a postcard addressed to Barbara Baker, a collector who was prolific at having covers flown on rocketplanes, postmarked at Edwards on April 19, 1966, and annotated by Fred Haise as having flown on a NASA F-104N jet during a flight to survey alternate dry lakebeds in support of the X-15. It was always a bit of an enigma to me: Why would Barbara Baker have a cover flown on the all-jet F-104N? Why did she put a "Via Rocket" sticker on it? And didn't Fred Haise report to Houston in April,1966? What was he doing flying X-15 support then?

Well, with the recent release of Haise' autobiography "Never Panic Early," the pieces started coming together. Haise made mention of the fact that before his astronaut selection, while a NASA Fight Research Center (FRC) pilot at Edwards AFB, he had flown a number of aircraft flights to survey the surrounding dry lakebeds for their suitability in case the X-15 had to make an unplanned landing. Once the lakebeds got rained on, they got soft and any landing aircraft (like an X-15) could get stuck and possibly break its' landing gear. In fact in Chuck Yeager's autobiography, he tells the story of he and Neil Armstrong doing such a flight and getting their T-33 jet trainer stuck in the mud. Haise mentioned that he did most of his lakebed survey flights in NASA's old C-47 transport plane since it had big tires, and hence less chance to get stuck (as Neil and Chuck did). So that left another question of why Haise might use a skinny-wheeled F-104N fighter plane instead of the C-47 on April 19, along with the question of the timeline.

Timeline? Haise mentioned in his book that his selection to the 1966 astronaut class was announced on April 4, 1966, and that he officially transferred to JSC on April 24. Which meant that he was still an active pilot for NASA FRC on the flight date of April 19.

Why F-104N? NASA SP 2007-562 ("X-15: Extending the Frontiers of Flight") mentions that the first few months of 1966 were very rainy at Edwards. In fact, checking the X-15 flight log, no flights were attempted between November 4, 1965, and April 13, 1966, the latter being an abort due to a technical problem. So the lakebeds were obviously checked-out as dry prior to April 13. The next X-15 flight attempt was scheduled for April 20. So, likely Haise went out on April 19 just as a double check of the lakebeds prior to the April 20 attempt, didn't need the C-47 since the lakebeds had been earlier verified as dry, and possibly used the F-104N because it could fly a landing profile almost identical to the X-15. Or maybe he flew an F-104N because it was the plane he got assigned that day. By the way, the April 20 X-15 launch was also scrubbed due to technical problems.

Why the "Via Rocket" sticker? The April 4 press release announcing the Apollo astronaut selection mentioned that Haise was a project pilot at FRC. Maybe Miss Baker saw that and assumed that Haise flew the F-104 version that incorporated rocket power (the Air Force NF-104) and sent the card to him, with sticker, hoping he would fly it on that plane. Or maybe she saw a reference to the NASA F-104N and mixed it up with the rocket-powered Air Force NF-104 (easy to mix up).

Anyhow there is now a reasonable explanation of the plane, the mission, the sticker, and the timeline for this card. Fun detective work! Even though it isn't an item flown on a rocketplane, this card is a great souvenir of the behind-the-scenes efforts that went into making the X-15 fly, even on days when it wasn't out booming and zooming. And it was flown by someone who made even more history four years later...

posted 08-28-2022 07:49 AM               

The flown Starfighter jet card to Baker incorporates many facets that come together; Right before his NASA astronaut selection, Haise was still flying as a FRC test pilot, the cover flown is X-15 support related, and on top of that, Dennis, he had already been officially chosen as a Group 5 astronaut!

posted 11-23-2023 02:15 PM               

I did a lot of support flying for the X-15. We had one aircraft checked out, the one that is right now sitting at the Armstrong Museum in Ohio, an F5D. They added a telemetry communication system like the X-15. We used it to fly up range and test the stations at Beatty and Ely, Nevada, that were going to intercept the telemetry stream from the X-15. We normally do that a day or two before the flight. We’d go check the lake beds along the way where the extra team might have to drop into. So, if the engines quit on the way back before they were shut down, normally they couldn’t make it back to Edwards, they’d drop into one of these interim lake beds. So we always checked those out within the week before the flight to make sure they were dry and suitable for landing. The morning of the flight, earlier than the planned B-52 operations, you’d fly early and go check the weather all the way up to the launch point and back to make sure it was good enough, turbulence and that kind of thing.

Then when it launched, there were three different chase positions. There was a chase that was right at launch, actually two aircraft. One was a photographer; it carried a photographer to capture the launch itself. Then there was a chase airplane that kind of circled in an intermediate path on the way home to intercept if it ended up having to do an emergency landing in one of those interim lake beds. Then there’s a chase that would intercept it right at Edwards to fly on his wing down to the landing and mainly to make sure they check that the skids, not landing tires, came out – the main landing gear and the nose gear. So there were chase positions to be manned for each of the flights. I had an enormous amount of flying time in those months and in the year before (1965, I think) of my selection.