I cared for Leslie and enjoyed her company. But if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t marrying her because I had been moved to in my heart. I thought about the six groomsmen who were prepared to stand up with me. They were all Navy men, some from my squadron who I hadn’t even known for very long. The people I had grown up with and been through trials with and who had been there for me for many years, were coming to the wedding, but they weren’t in the wedding party. Without being aware of it, I had created a Navy event rather than a wedding.
I felt I had no choice but to go through with it. I wasn’t going to disappoint Leslie and her family, or my own family. Mark was coming all the way from Japan, and I thought about how bewildered and annoyed he would be if he arrived to learn the wedding had been called off. By the time I was dancing with Leslie at our reception, I had managed to put all these thoughts out of my mind. Somehow it didn’t feel like a permanent mistake I was making. I was only twenty-eight. I would try to make this work, but if I couldn’t, I figured, I could get divorced.
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I APPLIED TO U.S. Navy test pilot school in Patuxent River, Maryland, after two and a half years in the Pukin’ Dogs. Usually pilots serve in a fleet squadron for four years before applying, so I didn’t think I would be accepted, but I wanted to let the selection board see that my interest was serious and to familiarize myself with the application process. To my surprise, I was selected, and even better, my brother had been selected too, so we would be classmates. We started in July 1993. My biggest concern wasn’t my flying, which I had become pretty confident about, but the fact that I had almost never used a personal computer. I knew I would have to get comfortable with technology, so I asked a squadron mate to help me buy one and teach me how to use it.
Leslie and I headed to Patuxent River (everyone calls it Pax River for short), only a few hours from Virginia Beach. This would be the first time in my career that I spent much time with members of the other military services. The school had U.S. Air Force pilots, Marine pilots, Army pilots; there was an Australian F-111 pilot and an Israeli helicopter pilot. Some of the people in my class would later become astronaut colleagues: Lisa Nowak, Steve Frick, Al Drew, and of course Mark. Soon after we arrived, the senior class threw a party for us, called a “You’ll Be Sorry” party, warning us that we would be sorry for deciding to become test pilots because the training was so hard.
I didn’t find the academic work particularly grueling, though I had to review some calculus and physics. We learned about aircraft performance, flying qualities, flight control systems, and weapons systems of the aircraft we might be testing. We also spent time familiarizing ourselves with the airplanes we would fly regularly during training. For the fixed-wing pilots like me, that meant the T-2 again, as well as the Navy version of the T-38, a much more challenging airplane. Friday nights were spent at the BOQ bar or at the home of one of my classmates. The weekends we spent doing homework.
As we got checked out in the T-38, I found landing particularly challenging, because I had gotten out of the habit of flaring an airplane—pulling back on the stick as you get closer to the ground to arrest the rate of descent prior to touchdown. When we land on a carrier we approach and land with a constant rate of descent. We also started flying other airplanes, generally with instructors or classmates who were checked out in them. This was all meant to expand our flight experience base. We also learned to write technical reports, a large part of the program. Experimenting and collecting data on a specific aspect of the airplane, then writing a detailed report on the findings, take more of a test pilot’s time than actually flying airplanes.
After graduating from test pilot school in July 1994, I moved to the other side of the airfield to the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate, the Navy’s test squadron for high-performance jet airplanes, located on the same base. My fighter squadron was a great fraternity, but in some ways the test pilot community was better because of its diversity. There were civilians (a group of people I hadn’t previously worked with much in the military), people from different countries, different cultures, ethnicities, sexual orientations, genders, and backgrounds. I was surprised to find that diverse teams were stronger teams, each person bringing his or her own strengths and perspectives to our shared mission.
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MY DAUGHTER Samantha was born on October 9, 1994, in Pax River. Leslie had become more fragile and sensitive during her pregnancy, but once Samantha was born, Leslie’s life revolved around her. As a mother, she was doting and full of praise. Samantha was a jolly kid, outgoing and infectiously happy.
Mark lived not far from us, and he and his wife came over often, or we would go to their home. I was part of a close-knit group of test pilots and flight test engineers, and we all enjoyed having one another over on the weekends. Leslie and I both liked having people around, which kept us from having to spend as much time alone together. My colleagues and friends all liked her, and so did their spouses. So for a while, we got along. Thanksgivings and Christmases with her family or mine were always great. I was doing the work I wanted to do and I had a family. It seemed like this was going to be my life.
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IN MY ROLE as test pilot I was assigned to assist in the investigation of an accident involving an F-14 that had crashed on approach to the USS Abraham Lincoln in a routine training mission. Lost in the accident was Kara Hultgreen, a pilot I had overlapped with in flight school. I didn’t get to know her well in Beeville, but since she was one of very few women there, she was hard to miss. Shortly after we got our wings, when the Navy had just opened up combat positions to women pilots, Kara had become the first woman to qualify in the F-14. Her achievement drew a lot of attention, so it was especially distressing that she lost her life soon after, on October 25, 1994.
A video of the crash, shot from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier, showed the airplane overshooting the centerline. When Kara turned the airplane too tightly, the airflow into the left-hand engine was disturbed, causing a compressor stall—a known issue with the F-14A. (The F-14 had horrendous flying qualities in general, and the scene in Top Gun where Goose smashes into the canopy is one of the more accurate moments in that movie.) When Kara engaged the afterburner on the remaining engine, the rapid thrust asymmetry caused her to lose control of the aircraft. Her RIO was able to eject them both and he escaped safely, but the pilot gets ejected 0.4 seconds later, by which point the cockpit was facing the ocean. She impacted the water before her parachute opened and was killed instantly.