In “The Right Stuff,” a Tom Wolfe book — later a movie — about the space program’s early days, test pilots and their wives are sitting in a bar near Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
One of the wives, noticing photos of pilots on the wall, asks how her husband can get his photo with the others.
“He has to die,” says one of the pilots.
Scott Crossfield, 83, avoided that distinction but practically no other
in a 60-year career that has taken him from roles as a pilot on a Navy
aircraft carrier in World War II to experimental aircraft test pilot,
commercial airline executive, manufacturing consultant with North
American Aviation (later Rockwell International Corp.) and advisor to
the House Transportation Committee.
Crossfield, who lives in Virginia, is the guest of honor at the 19th
Annual Biplane Expo, being held Thursday through Saturday at Frank
Phillips Field in Bartlesville. He flew into Bartlesville this week,
piloting a Cessna 210.
After World War II, Crossfield became a test pilot when he found out
his aeronautical engineering degree was good for a $120-a-month job.
“So I looked for work as a pilot,” he said. “That’s when I heard about
the NACA work.”
In 1950, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics — now the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration — was beginning the work
that transformed U.S. aeronautical research from World War II fighters
to spacecraft.
During the 1950-60 period at Edwards, Crossfield flew tests in the Bell
X-1, the Convair XF-92, the Northrup X-4, the Bell X-5, the Douglas
D-558-1 and the Douglas D-558-11 Skyrocket.
He was the first man to fly the North American X-15 and the first to
fly at twice the speed of sound, 1,291 mph, on Nov. 20, 1953, in the
Skyrocket. He also was the first to fly at three times the speed of
sound in the X-15 on Dec. 10, 1960, although unofficially.
