James McDivitt

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James McDivitt
NASA Group 2 (1962)
MissionsGemini 4
Apollo 9
Mission insignia
RetirementJune 1972

James Alton McDivitt Jr. (June 10, 1929 – October 13, 2022) was an American

Astronaut Wings
.

In 1962, McDivitt was selected as an astronaut by NASA as part of

Apollo lunar module and the complete set of Apollo flight hardware. He later became the manager of lunar landing operations and was the Apollo spacecraft program manager from 1969 to 1972. In June 1972 he left NASA and retired from the USAF with the rank of brigadier general
.

Early life

James Alton McDivitt Jr. was born on June 10, 1929, in

Tenderfoot Scout, the second rank in Scouting.[3] He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan and graduated from Kalamazoo Central High School in 1947.[4] He then worked for a year to earn enough money to attend junior college.[5] He completed two years at Jackson Junior College (now known as Jackson College) in Jackson, Michigan, from 1948 to 1950.[6]

Military service

James McDivitt in his Air Force uniform as a colonel

In January 1951, McDivitt joined the

35th Fighter-Bomber Squadron,[6] and earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses.[7] His last mission was flown two hours after the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed.[5]

McDivitt returned to the United States in September 1953 and served as pilot and assistant operations officer with the 19th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at

aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan, where he graduated first in his class in 1959.[1][5]

After graduation, he went to

Aerospace Research Pilot School (Class I), and joined the Manned Spacecraft Operations Branch in July 1962.[6]
By September, McDivitt had logged over 2,500 flight hours, of which more than 2,000 hours was in
Astronaut Wings based on the USAF definition of space as starting at 50 miles (80 km).[10][a] McDivitt was in line to fly the X-15 when White left, and to head the project office for testing the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II, but he heard that NASA was looking to select a second group of astronauts to augment the Mercury Seven, and, after some thought, he decided to apply.[5]

NASA career

Project Gemini

Main article: Gemini 4

McDivitt was selected as an astronaut by NASA in September 1962 as part of

Astronaut Group 2.[12] On July 29, 1964, it was announced that he had been chosen as command pilot of Gemini 4,[13] becoming the first U.S. astronaut to command a crew on his first spaceflight. Only two other Gemini astronauts from this group commanded their first flights: Frank Borman (Gemini 7) and Neil Armstrong (Gemini 8).[5][b] The Chief of the Astronaut Office, Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton, selected Ed White as his pilot because the two men knew each other well, having attended the University of Michigan and test pilot school together.[16]

The mission objectives were ill-defined at first, but consideration was given to performing

NASA administrator James E. Webb.[17]

Patricia McDivitt (right) visits Mission Control in Houston during the Gemini 4 mission.

Gemini 4 was launched on June 3, 1965.[18] The mission lasted 97 hours and 56 minutes, and made 62 orbits,[19] The first objective was to attempt the first space rendezvous with the spacecraft's spent Titan II launch vehicle's upper stage. This was not successful; McDivitt was unable to get closer than what he estimated to be 200 feet (61 m). Several factors worked against him. There were depth-perception problems (his and White's visual estimates of the distance differed, variously longer or shorter than each other at different times). The orbital mechanics of rendezvous were not yet well understood by NASA engineers or astronauts; catching up to something requires slowing down. Also, the stage was venting its remaining propellant, which kept pushing it around in different directions relative to the spacecraft.[20]

McDivitt finally broke off the rendezvous attempt in order to save propellant and preserve the second objective, which was for White to perform the first United States EVA. McDivitt controlled the capsule's attitude and photographed White during the "walk". The hatch on Gemini 4, through which White exited to make his walk, was prone to problems with the latch mechanism gears coming unmeshed, making it difficult to open and re-latch the hatch. McDivitt had spent some time before the flight with a

McDonnell engineer, improvising a technique of forcing the gears to mesh by inserting the fingers inside the mechanism. The hatch was difficult to open and also to relatch during the flight, but McDivitt was able to get it working both times, with his hands in his pressurized space suit gloves. If he had not been able to get the hatch latched after the spacewalk, both men would have most likely not survived re-entry.[21]

McDivitt (right) and White in their space suits for the Gemini 4 mission

On the second day, over Hawaii, while White was asleep, McDivitt happened to see an unidentified flying object (UFO), which he described as looking "like a beer can or a pop can, and with a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it".[5] He took a few photographs of it, but did not have time to properly set exposure or focus properly. He believes that since it was visible to him, it must have been in an orbit close to that of his spacecraft, probably a piece of ice or multi-layer insulation that had broken off. Word of the "UFO photos" reached the press by the time the flight splashed down, and one eager reporter waited for the Gemini 4 photos to be processed. He found one with a cluster of three or four images that looked like disc-shaped objects with tails, which became known as the "tadpole" photo. McDivitt has identified these as reflections of bolts in the multipaned windows.[5] Mercury Seven astronaut Gordon Cooper wrote in his memoirs that it is the only officially reported account of a UFO in any of the Mercury, Gemini or Apollo missions.[22]

The mission ran into trouble in its final stages when there was a computer failure. Deviating from the flight plan,

Chris Kraft ordered McDivitt to perform a rolling atmospheric entry like the Mercury astronauts had used rather than the lifting bank angle entry that the computer had been intended to help them achieve. On the way down, McDivitt struggled with a stuck thruster, but eventually slowed and ultimately halted the roll rate. The spacecraft overshot its landing point by 80 kilometres (50 mi), but the astronauts were soon reached by the recovery ship, the USS Wasp.[5][23] The astronauts found that they were now celebrities. President Lyndon B. Johnson came to Houston to congratulate them,[23] and he promoted them to the rank of lieutenant colonel
.
ticker tape parade in Chicago, and went to the 1965 Paris Air Show, where they met cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.[26]

Project Apollo

Main article: Apollo 9

On March 21, 1966, NASA announced that McDivitt would be the

Bill Anders.[27][28]

McDivitt inside Command Module Gumdrop during Apollo 9 mission

McDivitt and his crew were training for this mission when disaster struck on January 27, 1967: a cabin fire killed Grissom's crew.[29] All crew assignments were canceled.[30] During the Congressional hearings that followed, McDivitt expressed confidence in NASA's management and safety measures.[31] After the Apollo 1 fire, plans resumed for McDivitt's crew to fly the Lunar Module mission as the second crewed flight. This was officially announced on November 20, 1967. By the summer of 1968, it was expected that the mission would now be flown as Apollo 8 in December with the Saturn V, which was now expected to be available, but it was increasingly clear that the lunar module would not be ready by that time.[32][33] McDivitt was summoned to Slayton's office. According to McDivitt:

By this time I'd been working on the Lunar Module with Dave and Rusty for a year and a half. I knew something was up when Deke called me in because, for one thing, I knew that the lunar module wasn't likely to be ready before January 1969. Deke explained the situation and said that he wanted me to stick with my original mission—which would now become Apollo 9. But he wasn't going to force me. It wasn't just a case where, since this C-Prime mission wouldn't carry a lunar module, NASA didn't want to throw away our training. Frank Borman and Bill Anders had been training on the lunar module too. I think it was that Rusty and I knew more about this particular lunar module than anyone else. So there was a certain logic to keeping us where we were. Over the years this story has grown to the point where people think I was offered the flight around the Moon but turned it down. Not quite. I believe that if I'd thrown myself on the floor and begged to fly the C-Prime mission, Deke would have let us have it. But it was never really offered.[34]

Apollo 9, McDivitt's ten-day Earth orbital Lunar module test mission, lifted off on March 3, 1969. Because there were two spacecraft, two names were required. McDivitt's crew called their lunar module "Spider" and the command module "Gumdrop".

Service Propulsion System (SPS). This was also successfully accomplished. The S-IVB was then fired again to send it into solar orbit.[36]

The Apollo 9 crew, McDivitt, Scott, Schweickart. Apollo 8 is on the launch pad behind them.

The next day McDivitt and Schweickart donned their space suits and entered the LM. This was the first time that astronauts had transferred from one spacecraft to another. They then tested the LM's propulsion systems. On the fourth day, Schweickart donned the

Primary Life Support System, the backpack that astronauts would later wear on lunar surface EVAs, and exited the LM. At the same time, Scott opened the door of the CSM, and the two astronauts took pictures of each other. The next day, Scott undocked, and McDivitt flew the LM, putting the spacecraft's descent engine through its paces. As with the CSM, the crew quickly gained confidence in the reliability and performance of their spacecraft. Finally, he used the LM's ascent engine to dock with the CSM once again. After 10 days during which it had made 151 orbits, Apollo 9 splashed safely down in the Atlantic, where it was retrieved by the USS Guadalcanal.[36]

After Apollo 9, McDivitt became Manager of Lunar Landing Operations in May 1969,[37] and led a team that planned the lunar exploration program and redesigned the spacecraft to accomplish this task.[38] In August 1969, he became Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program.[8][39] As such, he was the program manager for Apollo 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 missions. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general on February 17, 1972.[38][40] When the selection of Gene Cernan to command the Apollo 17 mission was announced, McDivitt confronted Kraft over not being consulted about it, and threatened to resign unless Cernan was removed. Kraft consulted with Slayton, who gave a less than frank account of a January 1971 helicopter accident that Cernan had been involved in, not revealing that Cernan had confessed to flying the helicopter into the water. Kraft then informed McDivitt that Cernan's selection stood, and McDivitt resigned, although he stayed on until the end of the Apollo 16 mission.[41]

Post-NASA career

Jim McDivitt, February 2009

McDivitt retired from the USAF and left NASA in June 1972, to take the position of Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs for

Consumers Power Company. In March 1975, he joined Pullman, Inc. as Executive Vice President and a director. In October 1975 he became President of the Pullman Standard Division.[1]

In January 1981 he joined Rockwell International where he was the Senior Vice President, Government Operations and International at the time of his retirement, Washington, D.C. He retired in 1995.[1]

Organizations

McDivitt was a member of the

Knight of Columbus, and represented the Order at the Third World Congress for the Lay Apostolate at the Vatican in 1967.[42]

Awards and honors

McDivitt (right) and White (3rd from right) shake hands with Yuri Gagarin (left) at the 1965 Paris Air Show.

McDivitt received honorary doctorate degrees in astronautical science by the University of Michigan in 1965,

U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame class in 1993.[52][53]

In media

In the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon McDivitt was played by Conor O'Farrell.[54][55]

McDivitt appeared as himself on

Bobby Brady.[56][57]

Tributes

McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 9 in March 2019

Personal life

McDivitt married Patricia Ann Haas in 1956.

outdoor activities.[1]

McDivitt died in his sleep on October 13, 2022, in Tucson, Arizona. He was 93 years old.[62][63]

Explanatory footnotes

  1. limit of space at 100 kilometres (62 mi).[11]
  2. Gerald Carr (Skylab 4).[15]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Biographical Data" (PDF). NASA. December 1994. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
  2. ^ "James Alton McDivitt—Джеймс Олтон Макдивитт". astronaut.ru. Retrieved December 25, 2022.
  3. ^ "Astronauts and the BSA" (PDF). Boy Scouts of America. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 22, 2011. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
  4. ^ "Kalamazoo Central History". Kalamazoo Central High School. Retrieved August 25, 2021.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i McDivitt, James (June 29, 1999). "James A. McDivitt Oral History" (Interview). NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Interviewed by Doug Ward. Elk Lake, Michigan: NASA. Retrieved August 26, 2021.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Burgess 2013, p. 152.
  7. ^ a b "James McDivitt – Recipient". Military Times. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  8. ^ a b "Brigadier General James A. McDivitt". U.S. Air Force. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  9. ^ a b "MSC Names Nine New Pilot Trainees" (PDF). NASA Roundup. Vol. 1, no. 24. September 19, 1962. pp. 1, 4–5. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  10. ^ Evans 2013, pp. 94–95.
  11. ^ "Statement about the Karman Line". World Air Sports Federation. November 30, 2018. Retrieved August 26, 2021.
  12. ^ "Here are the Next Nine Astronauts Who Will Join in U.S. Race to the Moon". The Tampa Tribune. Tampa, Florida. UPI. September 18, 1962. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ Hacker & Grimwood 2010, pp. 223, 239.
  14. ^ Slayton & Cassutt 1994, pp. 166–167.
  15. ^ Carr, Gerald P. (October 25, 2000). "Edited Oral History Transcript – Gerald P. Carr" (Interview). NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Interviewed by Kevin M. Rusnak. Huntsville, Arkansas: NASA. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  16. ^ a b Slayton & Cassutt 1994, pp. 137–138.
  17. ^ Hacker & Grimwood 2010, pp. 240–242.
  18. ^ Hacker & Grimwood 2010, p. 24.
  19. ^ Hacker & Grimwood 2010, pp. 524–525.
  20. ^ Hacker & Grimwood 2010, pp. 246–248.
  21. ^ Hacker & Grimwood 2010, pp. 248–250.
  22. ^ Cooper & Henderson 2000, p. 87.
  23. ^ a b Hacker & Grimwood 2010, pp. 252–253.
  24. ^ "Remarks in Houston at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center". The American Presidency Project. June 11, 1965. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  25. ^ a b "Johnson Honors Space Twins in Washington". Longview News-Journal. UPI. June 17, 1965. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. ^ Hacker & Grimwood 2010, pp. 253–254.
  27. ^ Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, pp. 211–212, 261.
  28. ^ Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, pp. 373–374.
  29. ^ Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, pp. 214–217.
  30. ^ Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, p. 261.
  31. ^ Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, p. 224.
  32. ^ Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, p. 262.
  33. ^ Slayton & Cassutt 1994, p. 214.
  34. ^ Slayton & Cassutt 1994, p. 215.
  35. ^ Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, p. 292.
  36. ^ a b Brooks, Grimwood & Swenson 1979, pp. 293–295.
  37. ^ "McDivitt Named Manager For Lunar Landing Operations In ASPO" (PDF) (Press release). NASA. June 25, 1969. MSC Press Release 69-52. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
  38. ^ a b Burgess 2013, p. 153.
  39. ^ "James McDivitt Named Head of ASPO" (PDF). NASA. September 25, 1969. MSC Press Release 69-66. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
  40. ^ "McDivitt of Astronauts Nominated for General". The New York Times. December 13, 1970. Retrieved August 28, 2021.
  41. ^ Kraft 2001, pp. 346–347.
  42. ^ United Press International (October 11, 1967). "Meek days Over, Laymen Theme". The Boston Globe.
  43. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Commanded Apollo 9, the third crewed Apollo mission". New Mexico Museum of Space History. Archived from the original on December 12, 2017. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  44. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". American Academy of Achievement.
  45. ^ "Aviation Pioneers Receive Test Pilot Awards". Wisconsin State Journal. Madison, Wisconsin. September 29, 1969. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com.
  46. ^ "Walk of Honor". City of Lancaster. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  47. ^ Grady, Mary (December 18, 2013). "Aviation Hall Of Fame Honors Six". AVweb. Retrieved December 23, 2013.
  48. ^ "Enshrinee James McDivitt". nationalaviation.org. National Aviation Hall of Fame. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
  49. ^ "Four Days to Earn Doctorates". The News-Palladium. Benton Harbor, Michigan. Associated Press. June 16, 1965. p. 13 – via Newspapers.com.
  50. ^ "Brigadier General James A McDivitt". U.S. Air Force. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  51. ^ Shay, Erin (October 3, 1982). "Astronauts Laud Gemini as Precursor to Shuttle". Albuquerque Journal. Albuquerque, New Mexico. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com.
  52. ^ Clark, Amy (March 14, 1993). "Activities Honor Gemini Astronauts". Florida Today. Cocoa, Florida. p. 41 – via Newspapers.com.
  53. ^ "Jim McDivitt". Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. Retrieved June 25, 2016.
  54. ^ "From the Earth to the Moon: Can We Do This? {Part 1 of 12} (TV)". The Paley Center for Media. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  55. ^ "Spider {Part 5 of 12} (TV)". The Paley Center for Media. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  56. ^ "Watch The Brady Bunch Streaming Online". Hulu. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  57. ^ "Forbidden Planet". Popisms. Retrieved September 6, 2021.
  58. ^ "Homepage". James McDivitt Elementary School. Archived from the original on December 12, 2017. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  59. ^ "James McDivitt Hall". Jackson College. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  60. ^ Vielmetti, Edward (May 25, 2010). "Our neighborhoods: South University as seen from McDivitt-White Plaza". The Ann Arbor News. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  61. ^ a b "McDivitt, Jr., James Alton". National Aviation Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on September 29, 2021. Retrieved August 25, 2021.
  62. ^ Kim, Juliana (October 17, 2022). "Former NASA astronaut Jim McDivitt, who led Gemini and Apollo missions, dies at 93". NPR. Retrieved October 17, 2022.
  63. ^ "Correction: Apollo Astronaut James McDivitt Dies at Age 93". NASA. October 17, 2022. Retrieved October 17, 2022.

References

External links

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