First man on the moon Neil Armstrong was fascinated by aircraft from childhood
SOME people are lifetime achievers but one achiever, Neil Armstrong, had one achievement that eclipsed the others.
Today in History
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WHILE some people are happy with just one big achievement in their lives, others never stop achieving. But there is one consistent achiever who did something so big it eclipsed everything else he did — Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
Before his feet touched the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, he had already been a teenage pilot, a naval aviator, a Korean War veteran and an accomplished test pilot.
After his moon jaunt he became an aeronautical engineer, a university lecturer and a businessman.
His life is the inspiration for the film First Man, which opens in cinemas next week. But although the film is based on the 2005 biography First Man by James Hansen, it focuses only on his most famous achievement. It leaves out the life that led up to that moment without looking at what made him such a skilled, cool-headed flyer, the perfect person to send on a mission in space. But some of his brilliance as a pilot came from his early fascination with flight.
Neil Alden Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. His father Stephen Koenig Armstrong (born in 1907) worked for the Ohio state government as an auditor, a job that involved a lot of moving around. Neil lived in dozens of different places as a child before settling for a time in Wapakoneta and later Sandusky.
While growing up Armstrong heard stories about the Wright brothers and other pioneer aviators, developing a love of flying machines. In 1936 he took his first plane ride, with his father, aboard a Ford TriMotor “tin goose”, and his fascination became an obsession.
He built his own model planes and took any opportunity to watch the real things in action. When he was 14 he began taking flying lessons and had his pilot’s licence when he was 16 — before he had a driver’s licence.
Armstrong’s devout and musical mother was a major influence. He was decent, honest and trustworthy, played in a brass band at school and sang baritone in a glee club. He also grew up self-reliant and determined to succeed. At 10 he was cutting grass at the local cemetery. Later he worked at a bakery, a grocer, a hardware store and a drugstore.
He was allowed to spend some of his wages (a lot went on flying lessons) but he was encouraged by his parents to save for college.
Another influence was his time as an Eagle Scout. During War World II the scouts were given some military training, including learning about military aircraft. But it was a visit to a local observatory to achieve his boy scout astronomy badge that sparked his interest in space, particularly the moon. Even then, he wondered what it was like up on the surface of the moon. However, at the time he never dreamt of travelling there, and was more focused on planes.
Armstrong graduated from high school at 16 and in 1947 went to Purdue University on a navy scholarship to study aeronautical engineering. In 1949 he was called up for active service as a navy pilot, and by 1950 he was a fully qualified naval aviator.
When his squadron was posted to Korea in 1951, during what was then known as the UN police action, he flew escort on reconnaissance flights. But on a mission to bomb a bridge, flying in a Grumman F9F-2 Panther jet, he flew into anti-aircraft cable strung between two mountains.
He kept the machine flying to reach friendly territory but his aircraft was too badly damaged to slow down enough to land safely and his only option was to eject. He calmly went through all of the checks and ejected and, after drifting peacefully back to land, was quickly picked up by a friend in a jeep.
Released from service in 1952 he remained a member of the reserves and returned to his studies, completing his bachelor degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955. With his impressive knowledge, skills and experience he soon found work as a test pilot with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), in March 1955 flying the first of hundreds of test flights he would undertake as a test pilot. He developed a reputation for being cool in a crisis.
When NACA was absorbed by the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, Armstrong missed out on selection as one of the first seven astronauts in Project Mercury, the first human spaceflight program for the US. Despite being in the Navy Reserve, he was technically a civilian and selection was only open to military pilots.
However, he was involved in developing and testing aircraft, including the hypersonic X-15 rocket craft in 1960, before winning selection as one of a new group of astronauts in 1962 for the crew of Gemini 8. It was the sixth manned spaceflight but the first mission to conduct docking of spacecraft in 1966.
It proved to be the perfect preparation for his moon landing three years later.