Crossfield is Freedom
of Flight award recipient
By Barbara A. Schmitz
 |
|
Scott Crossfield in
June 2004, seated in his hangar at Manassas, Virginia, with his
airplane in the background. Photo by Joseph E. (Jeb) Burnside |
To the world, Scott
Crossfield was known as the first man to fly at more than twice the
speed of sound.
But to those at EAA, the
legendary test pilot was known for helping to promote and support the
grassroots aviation organization where he was member number 430120.
His son, Paul, accepted
EAA’s Freedom of Flight Award in his father’s memory yesterday
during a presentation in Theater in the Woods. The award is EAA’s
highest honor, bestowed annually to an individual whose contributions to
aviation closely mirror the integrity, entrepreneurship, and
innovativeness of EAA members.
Paul said this award
would have meant a great deal to his father since EAA had a special
place in his heart because it promotes a love of flying and aviation.
"Dad was always shy and at the same time pleased when acknowledged
for his life’s work," he said. "I am pleased that his hard
work is being acknowledged by those he cared about."
Paul’s sister, Becky,
agreed that her father would be very excited to receive this award.
"It means that his
beliefs and efforts to advance aviation and ‘go where no man has ever
gone’ are universally acknowledged and will lead to further
exploration," she said. "As a man filled with ideas who
refused to accept arbitrary boundaries, how could he not promote
anything or anyone with the same visions?"
The 84-year-old
Crossfield, who died when his single-engine plane crashed in Georgia
after encountering severe weather on April 19, had been an important
fixture at EAA events for years. In December 2005, he was the speaker at
EAA’s annual Wright Brothers Memorial Banquet. Two years earlier, he
was chief flight instructor for the 1903 Wright Flyer reproduction
that served as the centerpiece to EAA’s Countdown to Kitty Hawk
celebration at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
He also came to Oshkosh
to launch EAA’s full-size X-15 mock-up exhibit featured at the EAA
AirVenture Museum in 2001-2002, and Crossfield was a fixture at the
fly-in convention, delivering numerous forums and presentations about
his aviation career. His evening program last year with civilian
astronaut Mike Melvill was among the most popular events of the 2005
convention.
Paul said his dad was a
good example of mind over matter. "He had such a positive attitude
that his spirit overruled any physical limitations he had. Long after
most of us would have given in, he would shrug it off and say, ‘I don’t
have time to be sick.’"
An example of that
happened just a few months before he died. As Scott was walking through
an FBO in Florida, he tripped and fell on keys he was holding in his
hand, fracturing his arm and receiving bruises and cuts, including one
laceration that took 12 stitches to close, Paul said.
"But true to form,
he went to the hospital to get stitched and a cast, and rather than go
home, he headed south in his airplane and gave two more promised
speeches before he made it back home a week later," he said.
The one recognition that
probably meant the most to him was having a nearby elementary school
named after him, Becky said, and then being embraced by the student body
and staff. The elementary school in Herndon, Virginia, opened in 1988.
"What better place to learn to make dreams come true," she
said.
Paul agreed. "Dad
was always interested in education and until he died could name his
teachers starting from first grade," he said. "He had an
amazing mind and truly fit the definition of rocket scientist."
Yet his children simply
thought of him as dad, said another sibling, Sally.
"He isn’t my hero
because of anything aviation," she said. "He is my hero and I
love him because he could not only fix my car when I wrecked it, but
because when I did wreck it, he would teach me how not only to repair
the damage, but how to tune the engine, too.
"I love him because
he built go-carts for my brothers, and then raced with them around the
backyard, because he built a playhouse for me and because he shared my
love for horses," Sally said. "He would work in the garage or
the basement, where he had all kinds of machines. If I needed a bolt for
something, he would go downstairs and make it. If you asked him the
time, he could tell you how to make a clock. He could fix anything and
always had a funny whistle when he was preoccupied or concentrating that
used to drive me crazy. I wish I could hear it now."
Sally said her father was
always upbeat. "He started every day with something like "Good
morning! How are you this bright sunshiny, fabulous, glorious,
wonderful, beautiful, incredibly unlimited possibilities kind of
day?" she said. "I always thought that terribly annoying since
I am not such a morning person. I would just grunt at him and he would
smile like that was the sweetest thing he ever heard. Every day was a
gift and he loved each and every one of them, all 30,870 or so of
them."
Paul acknowledged
that his father was a hero to many. "But he never talked about it
or promoted himself," he said. "The truly great ones don’t
have to."
Sally agreed. "He
didn’t sit around and talk about himself, ever. I didn’t know a
tenth of what he was up to out in the world. None of us kids did. That’s
just who he was. A humble man who lived a full life and the people he
left behind for us to meet are such a wonderful gift to all of our
family. It helps in having to lose him by gaining this huge circle of
delightful people who also love him.
"God bless every inch of his
soul."
Crossfield’s life at
a glance
A. Scott Crossfield was
born in Berkeley, California, on Oct. 2, 1921. By the age of 6, he
became hooked on aviation when he got his first airplane ride.
As he grew older, he
started taking flying lessons. His first solo ride, however, tested his
flight skills. As he was doing spin entry and spin recovery maneuvers he
had practiced with his instructor, he experienced vibrations and heard a
banging noise he had not heard before. He recovered, climbed higher in
the plane, and repeated his maneuvers, only to hear the same noises and
vibration. On his third spin entry, at an even higher altitude, he
looked over his shoulder as he was spinning and saw that the
instructor’s door was flapping. He reached back, pulled the door
closed, and discovered all the vibrations, banging and noise stopped.
Satisfied, he recovered from the spin and landed. He discovered that his
instructor had been holding the door during their practice spin entries
and recoveries, and never mentioned this door quirk.
In later years,
Crossfield often said his curiosity about this solo spin anomaly and his
desire to analyze what was going on and why it happened was the start of
his test pilot career.
During World War II, he
was a flight instructor and fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy. In 1950, he
joined NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA), and became a test pilot, flying nearly all of the
experimental aircraft under test at Edwards Air Force Base, which is now
NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. Crossfield logged 87 rocket
flights and 12 jet flights there in the early 1950s.
A flight on November 20,
1953, however, put his name into history books when he became the first
man to fly at more than twice the speed of sound as he piloted the
Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket to a speed of 1,320 mph or Mach 2.005.
He left Edwards in 1955
to join North American Aviation as chief engineering test pilot. There,
he played a significant role in the design and development of the X-15
and flew its maiden flight in 1959. He flew the X-15 a total of 14
times, to a maximum altitude of more than 88,000 feet and a maximum
speed of Mach 2.97, or 1,960 mph.
Shortly after launch on
his third flight, however, one of its rocket engines exploded and
Crossfield had to make an emergency landing. Although the excessive load
on the aircraft broke it just behind the cockpit, Crossfield was
uninjured and the plane was repaired.
He remained at North
American as systems director of test and quality assurance in the
company’s Space and Information Systems Division where he oversaw
quality, reliability engineering and systems test activities for such
programs as the Apollo command and service modules and the Saturn II
booster.
Later in his career he
worked as an executive at Eastern Airlines and at Hawker-Siddeley and in
1977, he joined the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science
and Technology where he served, until his retirement in 1993, as a
technical adviser on civil aviation.
Crossfield said the opportunity to be a
test pilot is within the grasp of most people. "How would I advise
young people today, who want to be test pilots? What would I do? I
guess...the answer is the same as it has always been in history: that is
to want enough to do it."
