Rocket Men Page 12

  In the summer before Anders’s third year at the Academy, he and about four hundred classmates boarded the USS Bennington, an aircraft carrier bound from the East Coast for Halifax, to see how fliers operated at sea. Also aboard was an array of fighter aircraft: Panthers, Cougars, Crusaders, and the AJ Savage, a three-engine nuclear-weapon-carrying bomber. On the first night, a young Marine pilot made a landing approach in his Cougar, floated over all the wires, and slammed into a pack of parked airplanes. Such was the surplus of aircraft after the Korean War that sailors just pushed the damaged ones overboard rather than fix them.

  Hours later, an AJ Savage came roaring in and hit badly on landing. The pilot and copilot tumbled down the flight deck head over heels in their severed, flaming cockpit but somehow managed to survive; the third crewman, however, died when he was thrown under the ship.

  The smoke had hardly cleared on that incident when Anders saw one of the gull wings of a Corsair fold up during takeoff. Just off the flight deck, the plane did a full roll and plummeted into the water.

  Immediately, the carrier headed toward the downed aircraft to make a rescue. Anders could see the pilot in the cockpit, but it was clear the man wasn’t moving. Anders had been on the plebe swim team and could handle himself in rough waters; now he had a decision to make. He could jump in and try to rescue the pilot, or he could allow carrier rescue personnel to do what they were trained to do. The sight of the pilot, unresponsive and starting to sink, pulled on him, but he also knew the ship was moving at about thirty-five knots, he had no life jacket, and he’d have to fall about fifty feet before hitting the water. He had a thought that would bother him for years: If he did jump, he might get put on report or receive demerits. He saw a helicopter and a destroyer approaching to assist in the rescue, and in a split second he made his decision to stay aboard the ship. Rescuers couldn’t reach the scene, however, before the pilot and his airplane disappeared under the waves.

  Anders hardly knew what to make of the disasters he’d seen. Navy pilots were trained to be the best in the world in combat, yet they risked their lives every day, even during takeoff and landing. Still, an airplane had the power to take the fight to an enemy with an immediacy unavailable to giant ships. It was more personal, too, just pilot and machine as one. When it came time to decide what to do with his military career, Anders wanted nothing to do with aircraft carriers, but knew he had to fly.

  * * *

  —

  Anders continued to write to Valerie every day. Despite worries that she would turn him down, he bought an engagement ring and invited her to the Naval Academy’s formal Ring Dance, at which couples would dance through a replica of the cadets’ class ring. Valerie and Bill held each other close as they moved around the dance floor to the sounds of a big band. Valerie wore Bill’s class ring on a chain around her neck and the engagement ring on her hand.

  Valerie still wasn’t quite eighteen. Marriage meant giving up a college education, which was important to her. It also meant making a life with a man who’d chosen a dangerous line of work. But her father chased bad guys on his motorcycle for a living, and twice he had almost been killed on the job in accidents, so she was used to living with risk.

  There was also the matter of religion. Anders’s father was a strict Catholic, and his church would insist that Valerie be Catholic, too. In the end, that also seemed fine to a girl in love, and even though she was still in high school, Valerie said yes, knowing that Navy rules didn’t allow midshipmen to be married until graduation, so a yes for the future—not tomorrow, but a yes nonetheless.

  As a high-ranking member of his class, Anders had options with his career. He knew he wanted to fly, and he could decide between a commission in the Navy or the newly formed Air Force (established just eight years earlier). Choosing the Navy meant operating from short carrier decks. Choosing the Air Force meant flying from ten-thousand-foot concrete runways. Anders chose the Air Force.

  Shortly after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1955, Anders married Valerie in a Catholic ceremony at the naval chapel in San Diego. He then reported to Air Force flight training near the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where he began flying the T-34 Mentor. By the next stage in training, in the much bigger T-28, he realized that he had a natural ability. Sometimes he’d invite Valerie out to a dusty crossroads and put on a private airshow for her, flying too low, testing to see how much vertical pull-up he could endure before blacking out from loss of oxygen to the brain caused by high g-forces, seeing if he could wake up before the plane went down. Valerie loved her husband’s performances. She also liked that he didn’t play things exactly by the book, that he took risks. To Valerie, the most interesting lives often seemed to go that way.

  After earning his wings at age twenty-three, Anders was assigned to an Air Defense Command all-weather interceptor squadron at Hamilton Air Force Base near San Francisco, where he would fly the twin afterburner F-89 Scorpion. Interceptors flew to prevent enemy aircraft from penetrating restricted airspace, either by chasing them off or by engaging them in combat. Anders’s jet was armed with two rocket-propelled missiles, each with a 3.5-kiloton nuclear warhead attached—combined, it equaled about half the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. To fire the weapons, the radar operator in the backseat had to throw a switch, and the pilot in the front seat had to throw his own switch. That’s all it required. Officially, the crew needed an order from the ground, but if Anders and a buddy wanted to start World War III, they could do it on their own. “That’s the Cold War,” Anders told Valerie. “It’s up to us not to screw up.”

  In February 1957, the Anders family welcomed their first child, Alan. And in July 1958, Valerie gave birth to Glen. Raising a young family in California was idyllic, with the warm weather and abundant culture, maybe too good to be true, so it came as little surprise when Anders got a new assignment: Iceland.

  Valerie would stay with the kids in California while her husband moved four thousand miles away. Again, Anders’s job was to fly interceptors. This time, he would be going after Soviet bombers, long-range machines that flew missions near Iceland and the North Atlantic designed to test American air defenses. To help avoid starting a world war, his aircraft and others would be armed only with conventional air-to-air rockets, no nukes.

  Early in his assignment, a Soviet bomber penetrated the eastern edge of Iceland’s Air Defense Identification Zone. Anders and his wingman scrambled into the air, afterburners blazing, and caught up with the Russian plane. Anders positioned his wingman to shoot down the bomber if its pilot gave the Americans any trouble, then flew his F-89 so close he could call out the eye colors of the Soviet crew. The Russians smiled and waved. Anders offered his own American greeting—a middle finger.

  The Soviet crew kept smiling and waving, then broke back to where they belonged.

  Low on fuel, Anders returned to base, knowing the incident would be important to American intelligence officers, as it was among the first—if not the very first—intercept of a Soviet bomber in the zone. On the ground, he described the event.

  “Anything else?” asked a representative of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

  Anders feared he would be facing some discipline. Still, he had to be honest.

  “There is something else,” Anders said nervously. “I probably should tell you that, you know…I gave them the finger.”

  The man smiled. There was no trouble.

  Anders flew more missions in Iceland, many of them risky, both for the dangerous flying conditions and for the potential conflict with Soviet bombers. Three or four months after Anders flipped off the Russian crew, another pilot in his squadron intercepted a Soviet bomber. This time, the Russians had a response to their American pursuers, and they held it up to their window—a sign printed in English—for the Air Force pilots to see.

  American intel had a good laugh when they heard the story. To them,
it represented the layers of bureaucracy that constituted the Soviet socialist system. It had taken more than one hundred days for the first bomber crew to report Anders’s middle finger, for word to travel through channels to the Kremlin, for analysts to decipher it, for committees to formulate a response, for other committees to approve it, for translators to put the Soviet answer into English, for orders to be given to a new bomber crew, and for the Soviet pilots to deliver it.

  Their message to the Americans flying alongside: WE FUCKED YOUR SISTER.

  After more than a year in Iceland, Anders was sent back to Hamilton Field in California, a welcome return for Valerie. Anders continued flying interceptor missions, this time with the nuclear-armed supersonic F-101 Voodoo, a fearsome jet capable of reaching speeds in excess of a thousand miles per hour.

  At Hamilton, Valerie became even more accustomed to the stresses of being married to a fighter pilot. Men died in this line of work, she knew that, but it was always terrible to see a black Air Force car drive into base housing to deliver the bad news. Every time she saw the black car she wondered, Is my life about to change? Could this happen to us? And even as the car passed her home and stopped at a neighbor’s, she didn’t kid herself. Yes, she thought, it could certainly happen to us.

  In December 1960, the Anders family welcomed a third child, Gayle. Around the same time, Anders began to get itchy. Interceptor work was interesting, but he didn’t feel pushed to his limits, not in body or mind, in a way that would make for a satisfying long-term career. In 1961, he went to see Chuck Yeager at the Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. Pushing unproven airplanes to their limits demanded a new level of intellectual engagement, raw bravery, and adventure; to Anders, that sounded like the life he wanted.

  Yeager was impressed by Anders’s flying credentials but urged him to go back to college and obtain an advanced degree in science or engineering, since that’s what the Air Force was looking for in test pilot candidates. Anders followed the recommendation and applied to the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. He requested a program in either aeronautical or astronautical engineering, but administrators put him in nuclear engineering. To cover his bases, Anders enrolled in a night school program in aeronautics at nearby Ohio State University.

  Over the next two years, Anders studied, fathered another child, Gregory, and learned more about nuclear energy and radiation. In 1962, he graduated second in his class with a master’s degree in nuclear engineering. He submitted his application for test pilot school, but now the school wasn’t accepting new students. Dejected, he chose to go to the Air Force Special Weapons Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to work on a radiation shielding project and instruct pilots in jet aircraft. All the while, he waited for an opening at the test pilot school. Valerie took an astronomy course at the University of New Mexico, just out of fascination with the subject, a baby on her hip.

  In June 1963, Anders was driving in his Volkswagen Microbus when he heard a news broadcast on the radio. The announcer said that NASA had decided to add a third group of astronauts. Anders met every one of the agency’s requirements: age limit thirty-five, two thousand hours flying time in advanced jets, maximum height six feet. “Must also be a test pilot,” the man said. Anders’s heart sank. “Or the applicant must possess an advanced degree.” Anders wondered if he’d heard the last part correctly. He pulled over to the side of the road and waited, through twelve minutes of commercials and bad music, for the next newscast. He had heard correctly—one needn’t be a test pilot to apply. He wrote down NASA’s address. He’d been interested in astronauts since the Mercury 7, the United States’ first group of astronauts, had arrived on the scene four years earlier, but space travel had never seemed possible for mere fighter pilots. Now, things had changed.

  It would be his dream job in many ways. Joining NASA would give Anders the intellectual stimulation he craved, the chance to fly the most advanced machines ever built, and the opportunity to become an explorer, a space-age version of Charles Lindbergh or Vasco da Gama, the New World voyagers he’d always admired. And he could bring back unknown rocks from his journeys to the Moon.

  And there was another benefit, one that resonated with a man whose father had fought back against America’s attackers, even when the United States wasn’t formally at war: He could do more in space than anywhere else to help defeat the Soviet Union.

  That night, Anders wrote a letter in longhand to NASA describing his qualifications: world’s greatest pilot; can solve all space radiation problems; jet instructor; great guy. Valerie typed draft after draft after draft. They sent the final copy, by certified mail, the next day. It arrived with four thousand other letters penned by astronaut hopefuls.

  To Anders’s amazement, he was asked to report, along with about a hundred others, to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, for a physical. There, he was put through a battery of tests, not just physical but psychological.

  Near the end of the process, only twenty-eight finalists remained. Anders had to appear before the so-called Murder Board, a group of final interviewers that included current astronauts, Chris Kraft, and a doctor. He had little trouble with the questions from the space people. The doctor was another matter.

  “Well, Captain Anders,” the man said, “your record looks pretty good. But we’re worried about this concussion you had in the past.”

  Anders had never suffered a concussion. Could the doctor be trying to trip him up? Test him? Or maybe the doctor had another applicant’s records and believed he was interviewing a different candidate.

  Anders’s mother had taught him never to lie. But she’d also reminded him that he needn’t always blurt out the full truth, either. On the spot, he formulated an answer.

  “Sir, I’ve never been bothered by a concussion.”

  “Bothered” was the key word. That was true.

  On his thirtieth birthday—October 17, 1963—the phone rang in the Anders home. Valerie handed him the receiver. It was Deke Slayton calling with a job offer. Anders never did figure out if the doctors had been looking at the wrong guy’s records. And as Slayton offered him a job, he was much too happy to care.

  * * *

  —

  NASA assigned each of its new astronauts to a specialty. Anders focused on radiation and environmental controls—cabin pressure, temperature, carbon dioxide, and so on.

  He also focused on potholes. After complaining about the condition of the roads near his new house, the town council named him street commissioner, a job he would hold, concurrent with his job as astronaut, for the next two years.

  Early in training, Anders gravitated toward two of his fellow new astronauts, Walt Cunningham and Rusty Schweickart. All three men had an intellectual bent, and all three were interested in space science. Not one had been a test pilot. Together, the trio tackled the single most vexing question at NASA: How does a new astronaut best position himself to get selected as soon as possible for a space flight? After careful analysis, they determined to increase their physical fitness, become more expert in their specialties, and further master the science of space travel.

  None of it made a ripple. To Anders, it seemed the more he and his pals tried, the more invisible they became to Slayton, the man who assigned astronauts to flights.

  And then it dawned on Anders. Slayton considered him, Cunningham, and Schweickart to be nerds. Slayton didn’t seem to give a damn about Anders’s advanced degree in nuclear engineering, or Cunningham’s doctoral work in physics, or Schweickart’s research on upper atmospheric physics at MIT. He certainly didn’t seem to appreciate that Anders had signed up for extra geology field trips. Selection appeared to come down to two criteria: seniority and one’s standing as a test pilot. And that wasn’t good news for Anders or his friends.

  It all struck Anders as unfair, but he still had to l
ook for an edge. It seemed to him that Slayton, an avid hunter, liked astronauts who joined his hunts. Anders had little interest in shooting game, but when an invitation to an antelope hunt went out, he signed up. Slayton and at least a dozen astronauts packed rifles and flew to Lander, Wyoming. On arrival, each was given a single bullet; it was a one-shot hunt, and that’s all the ammunition they were allowed. Anders wasn’t going to shoot at an antelope unless he was certain he could hit it. And yet he knew he couldn’t return to camp with an unfired bullet; nothing would cement the view of him as a square more than that.

  After a time, he spotted an antelope walking peaceably a few hundred yards away. Anders had been on the Air Force pistol team and was a good shot. He hated to do it but aimed his rifle and fired. His bullet tore into the antelope’s hindquarters, sending the wounded animal running and bleeding.

  Anders followed the trail, then killed the antelope with his knife, all the while apologizing to the poor creature and thinking, “This is the last goddamn antelope hunt I’m going on.” He knew astronauts were supposed to do manly things. But he also knew a hunt like this wasn’t him. He determined never to go on another.

  Back in Houston, another astronaut, Alan Bean, joined Anders, Cunningham, and Schweickart in their unofficial group. Bean had been a test pilot, but as an avid painter, he seemed more artist than warrior. By now, Anders should have realized it didn’t pay to look like an egghead, but since he and his friends weren’t being put on crews anyway, they decided (with the exception of Bean) to enroll at Rice University to pursue PhDs. For all Anders knew, he was destined to sit on the sidelines forever.