Speaker 1: Hi Jes, retired Air Force Lice colonel and retired NASA.
Speaker 1: I'm the author of what we call Father of the Motherplanes.
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Doctor Sky Show. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to our show.
Speaker 2: Mister Fulton, one of the most phenomenal airplanes I think
Speaker 2: of all time was the XB seventy and B seventy bomber.
Speaker 2: You flew it. Talk about the B seventy bomber.
Speaker 1: It's a big airplane, sorr offwa's stainless steel, honey comb,
Speaker 1: unusual construction. It's not my favorite airplane. Was my second favorite,
Speaker 1: B fifteen being the number one. But B seventy was
Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty thousand pounds, one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: five feet long and five Mark three a Florida Mark
Speaker 1: three and fifty. Some of my applies to the airplane
Speaker 1: and joined on had some tragedy in the program. But
Speaker 1: who was a good airplane?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, sir, And let's go back one minute for the
Speaker 2: B fifty eight. I think that's also a beautiful airplane.
Speaker 2: But you tell our audience you flew that to over
Speaker 2: eighty five thousand feet and you received the nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: two Harman International Aviation Trophy. That's a beautiful airplane.
Speaker 1: It's your airplane. Has some real problems to be a
Speaker 1: but live around the Air Force pause. We had the
Speaker 1: obscurity fly and I'll tell you they thought you was fine.
Speaker 2: It's some beautiful airplane, sir, and I want to thank
Speaker 2: you for spending a time today. And one last question
Speaker 2: for all the young students out there and people that
Speaker 2: aspire to aviation, what do you recommend they do if
Speaker 2: they want to be pilots of airplanes of the future.
Speaker 1: Many things. Get some education, get some knowledge of there
Speaker 1: you want to be in, try to use some light
Speaker 1: plane fly and then move on up to the heavier stuff.
Speaker 1: If you have the optuities with the Air Force or
Speaker 1: with commercial operation pass still have jobs available. Hard work
Speaker 1: is well.
Speaker 2: Mister Fulton. I want to thank you for your service
Speaker 2: to the United States of America and to the Air
Speaker 2: Force and all of the airplanes that you've flown. I
Speaker 2: thank you, sir for your time, and look forward to
Speaker 2: talking to you folks. If you'd like to learn much
Speaker 2: more about our special guest, Fitz Fulton, a legend and aviation,
Speaker 2: get a copy of his book entitled Father of the
Speaker 2: Mother Planes. Colonel. I want to thank you for joining
Speaker 2: us here on the Doctor Sky Show. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for spending time with us.
Speaker 1: Thank you one of my favorite places met my wife
Speaker 1: who married her. I hope we have it up to
Speaker 1: meet and talk airplanes well.
Speaker 2: I'd like to congratulate you on being married for well
Speaker 2: over seventy years to the love of your life. And again,
Speaker 2: thank you fitz Fulton for joining us today. A great
Speaker 2: history in the story of aviation today our very special
Speaker 2: guest fits you, Ill fitz Fulton Junior, born back on
Speaker 2: June sixth of nineteen twenty five. Our tribute to fitz
Speaker 2: Fulton continues as I read here an article my Carl
Speaker 2: Posey from Air and Space Magaze seeing Back in December
Speaker 2: of twenty thirteen, entitled the Greatest test Pilot You've Never
Speaker 2: Heard of? Carl Posey introduces us to Fitzfulton. The photograph
Speaker 2: shows a boy of five or six, jugg eared and happy,
Speaker 2: holding onto the wingstrut of a biplane, taken in rural Blakeley,
Speaker 2: Georgia in the early nineteen thirties. The image captures the
Speaker 2: joy afforded by small pleasures during hard times. But what
Speaker 2: boy would not have cheered by being close to a real,
Speaker 2: honest to goodness airplane. His mother evidently sensed the effect
Speaker 2: on her son, for she labeled a photograph first Love,
Speaker 2: the first of many. The boy would spend this working
Speaker 2: life in the close, sometimes perilous company of aircraft, taking
Speaker 2: them to war and exploring the extremes of their performance.
Speaker 2: His log book, with some seventeen thousand or so hours
Speaker 2: of flight in more than two hundred types of aircraft,
Speaker 2: would tell the story of how aviation evolved from a
Speaker 2: nineteen forties onward. For this Georgia boy would be present
Speaker 2: every crucial branching out of that evolutionary path, from pistons
Speaker 2: to jets, subsonic to supersonic. He would fly everywhere and everything,
Speaker 2: all aircraft great and small. Now eighty nine, fitz Al
Speaker 2: Fulton Junior, fits to family and friends, still has his
Speaker 2: mother's photos. I like that photograph, he says, we protected it.
Speaker 2: He thinks the airplane was a keen or powered bird.
Speaker 2: He never flew in it. He got his first flight
Speaker 2: several years later when a cousin sprang for a dollar
Speaker 2: ride in a Ford tri motor. After his parents separated, Fulton,
Speaker 2: his two siblings moved with their mother to the larger
Speaker 2: Georgia town of Columbus Or. Among other things, there was
Speaker 2: what was called a real airport. He had a four
Speaker 2: thousand foot grass runway and a fixed base operation that
Speaker 2: flew J three cubs and Taylor Crafts in the time
Speaker 2: honored way of air minded youngsters. He began hanging out
Speaker 2: at the field, doing occasional chores and reaping occasion riots.
Speaker 2: Eventually he settled into a more organized border system, sweeping
Speaker 2: the hangar, washing and fueling the airplanes. Pushing the airplanes
Speaker 2: in and out of the hangar. Each was good for
Speaker 2: five minutes of flight, which he hoarded, then spent twenty
Speaker 2: minutes at a time. In June of nineteen forty two,
Speaker 2: seventeen years old, just out of high school and not
Speaker 2: yet driving a car, he soloed in a J three
Speaker 2: cop In nineteen forty three, with the US Armed Forces
Speaker 2: needing pilots to serve in World War II, he entered
Speaker 2: the United States Army Air Force's Air Cadet program. Fledgling
Speaker 2: pilots of movies and myth invariably opt for single engine
Speaker 2: training with A nine, becoming fighter races. Fulton wanted to
Speaker 2: fly the twin engine lockeed P thirty eight, though he
Speaker 2: so chose multi engine aircraft training, but when the P
Speaker 2: thirty eight failed to materialize, he followed the less glamorous
Speaker 2: road to transports and bombers. It was one of those
Speaker 2: less traveled roads that would make all the difference. A
Speaker 2: career pilot of big airplanes. Houlton would fly the bombers
Speaker 2: that dropped the X fifteen and other experimental speedsters at
Speaker 2: Edward's Air Force Base in California during the time now
Speaker 2: regarded as the Golden Age of flight test, and that
Speaker 2: experience led to opportunities in the Space Shuttle program. I
Speaker 2: certainly welcomed that opportunity to drop the explains he said not.
Speaker 2: He adds quickly that he was uniquely qualified. Anybody could
Speaker 2: have flown the mother ships. But I had a lot
Speaker 2: of experience by then, and I like to think I
Speaker 2: helped to train some of those people. In nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: his own train led him to Davis mont And Army
Speaker 2: Airfield in Tucson, Arizona. He reported for duty on August
Speaker 2: the fourteenth, but the officer checking him in the next
Speaker 2: day wonted why he bothered to show up the war
Speaker 2: was over. Although somewhat devoid of flight, the Tucson assignment
Speaker 2: had an unexpected reward. It was there that Fulton met
Speaker 2: Irma Beck, to whom he has now been married for
Speaker 2: almost seventy years. Fulton was then sent to Roswell, New Mexico,
Speaker 2: where the three hundred and twentieth Troop Carriers Squadron was based.
Speaker 2: After winning a slaught as copilot on Douglas Sea fifty fours,
Speaker 2: Fulton played a supporting role in Operation Crossroads, on a
Speaker 2: topic weapons project for which an armada of captured and
Speaker 2: surplus warships had been assembled in a lagoon of the
Speaker 2: Bikini Atol in the Marshall Islands. The first test, on
Speaker 2: July the first, nineteen forty six, would detonate a fat
Speaker 2: Man plutonium bomb a few hundred feet above the lagoon
Speaker 2: to see what a twenty kiloton air burst woul due
Speaker 2: to the ships and tethered animals below. A few weeks later,
Speaker 2: a second bomb would be detonated under water. For Fulton,
Speaker 2: Crossroads meant long hauls from Roswell to Quadulien, the largest
Speaker 2: of the Marshall Islands, ferrying the accouterments of nuclear warfare,
Speaker 2: but the flight that stands out for him took place
Speaker 2: the day after the first bomb test, when he flew
Speaker 2: a Sea fifty four carrying scientists and Air Force brass
Speaker 2: out to see what the bomb had done. Flying over
Speaker 2: the lagoon at about two hundred feet, Fulton toward the
Speaker 2: affected area. It hadn't occurred, damn that the flight might
Speaker 2: expose him and his passengers to harmful levels of radiation,
Speaker 2: but his attention was fully on the fleet of ruined warships.
Speaker 2: In June nineteen forty eight and what became the opening
Speaker 2: political salvo in the Cold War, the Soviets plockaded road,
Speaker 2: rail and river access to the Allied controlled sectors of Berlin,
Speaker 2: then a divided city. As the Allies mounted an impossibly
Speaker 2: difficult release effort, the Berlin Airlift, Western aircrews with transport
Speaker 2: experience were suddenly very much in demand. Our tribute to
Speaker 2: the greatest test pilot you've never heard of, fitz Fulton continues.
Speaker 2: During Central Europe's formidable winter, Allied aircraft operated into and
Speaker 2: out of Reeinmann, Tempelhoff and Wiesbaden only a few minutes apart,
Speaker 2: undeterred by severe icing conditions, low ceilings and zero visibility sometimes,
Speaker 2: Fulton remembers, you didn't know you'd landed until you felt
Speaker 2: the tires on the runway. It built up my confidence,
Speaker 2: he says. I've always considered myself a pretty strong instrument pilot,
Speaker 2: but weather was a big problem. When the air left ended,
Speaker 2: Fulton headed back to the United States, this time to
Speaker 2: Egglin Air Force BACE in Florida, where B twenty nine's
Speaker 2: were testing new instruments. But the heat and humidity of
Speaker 2: Florida's Panhandle proved more than Ginger Fulton's lungs could tolerate
Speaker 2: her asthma attacks got so bad, Fulton and Irma feared
Speaker 2: that they might lose their little girl. A sympathetic commanding
Speaker 2: officer stepped in, and Fulton was offered a slot in
Speaker 2: southern California at what would soon be called Edward's Air
Speaker 2: Force Bace. He didn't know about much what was going
Speaker 2: on out there, but he was certain that the change
Speaker 2: in climate would help his daughter. Fulton took the transfer.
Speaker 2: After settling in California's high desert, Ginger's health quickly improved.
Speaker 2: Once get rated, Fulton began expanding his repertoire in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen fifties, borrowing an airplane was as easy as
Speaker 2: borrowing a jeep from the motor pool. And when he
Speaker 2: wasn't a the controls of a test aircraft, Fulton sat
Speaker 2: in as copilot or flew the Chase aircraft. Much of
Speaker 2: test piloting is the repetitive, rather humdrum stuff that makes
Speaker 2: its way into manuals as Performance Parameters and airplanes maxima
Speaker 2: and minimum. Of course, nobody became a test pilot to
Speaker 2: generate data. They joined for the moments. One of those
Speaker 2: moments was a night flight that Fulton made in a
Speaker 2: Lockheed F ninety four A which, as he turned back
Speaker 2: to Edward's Air Force Bace, lost all electrical power, rendering
Speaker 2: the aircraft's flaps, lights, and some critical instruments inoperable. Unable
Speaker 2: to set up a normal night landing, Fulton improvised. He
Speaker 2: stole the airplane, which gave him the known air speed,
Speaker 2: and from there worked out a let down approach. Asked
Speaker 2: today if that flight, or any flight, constituted a really
Speaker 2: bad moment for him, he says, to me, troubles were opportunities.
Speaker 2: The best pilot in the world can get in trouble.
Speaker 2: I'm not a defeatist. I like to work on problems
Speaker 2: that are solvable. Early two weeks into his term as
Speaker 2: a student than than the Test Pilot School at Edwards,
Speaker 2: Fulton learned he was headed for Korea, where the conflict
Speaker 2: was entering its second year. Unlike some of the older
Speaker 2: test pilots, he had never flown in combat. On September
Speaker 2: the eighteenth, nineteen fifty one, he arrived at K eight,
Speaker 2: the air base at Coonsan, South Korea. A day later,
Speaker 2: he began combat missions in the Douglas B twenty six Invader.
Speaker 2: His commander at Edwards had promised Fulton he would try
Speaker 2: to retrieve him when he finished his fifty five missions
Speaker 2: in Korea, and the promise was kept. By May of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two, Fulton was back in the Test Pilot school,
Speaker 2: which he completed that November. Not quite twenty seven years old,
Speaker 2: the unflappable, soft spoken Air Force captain resumed his career
Speaker 2: as a test pilot of all work. He was soon
Speaker 2: shuttling between Edwards and the Convet plant in Fort Worth,
Speaker 2: Texas to test fly the company's Mammoth B thirty six bomber.
Speaker 2: While learning was rapid. He wrote of the bomber in
Speaker 2: his autobiography, Father of the mother Planes. It had to
Speaker 2: be because the B thirty six was a high maintenance airplane.
Speaker 2: We seldom completed the flight without having to shut down
Speaker 2: one or more engines. With rear mounted propellers, engine oil
Speaker 2: leaking an eye altitude would freeze and hit the props
Speaker 2: and then be thrown into the fuselage, sometimes even penetrating
Speaker 2: the airplane's skin. After that, he came back to Edwards
Speaker 2: for a bomb drop test from B thirty six and
Speaker 2: test of what now sounds like a hair brain scheme,
Speaker 2: a B thirty six carrying an RF eighty four f thunderflash,
Speaker 2: which would be deployed from and recovered on a retractable
Speaker 2: trapeze like device extended from the bomber's belly. The project
Speaker 2: was the first of many encounters Fulton would have with
Speaker 2: big ships carrying small ones. He also began testing a
Speaker 2: new family of light jet bombers, among them the Glen L.
Speaker 2: Martin Company's XB fifty one. One of Fulton's closest friend's
Speaker 2: Air Force Major Neil Lathrop, was killed during a low
Speaker 2: altitude role in the Experimental Aircraft Fulton flying a B
Speaker 2: twenty nine bomb drop test that they saw the coil
Speaker 2: of black smoke rising from the dry Lake. It was
Speaker 2: the first time Fulton lost a good friend to a
Speaker 2: new airplane. It would not be his last. The Air
Speaker 2: Force had also become interested in the Royal Air Force's
Speaker 2: English Electric Canberra, A twin jet which Martin was bringing
Speaker 2: out in the United States is the B forty seven.
Speaker 2: Fulton was assigned to the test flights. On one B
Speaker 2: fifty seven flight, as he came out of a loop,
Speaker 2: he discovered that the control wheel had decoupled from the
Speaker 2: flight control system. Pushing the wheel full forward had no
Speaker 2: effect on the airplane. When things go wrong, some pilots
Speaker 2: yell on the radio. That's not my style, says fits.
Speaker 2: You have procedures. If you have a problem, then you
Speaker 2: call in and they offer suggestions. When Fulton reported the problem,
Speaker 2: the consensus on the ground was that he should bail out,
Speaker 2: but he thought that if he used the elevator trim
Speaker 2: for pitch control, he might be able to save the airplane.
Speaker 2: He managed a fast, straight in landing on the dry Lake,
Speaker 2: for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The
Speaker 2: B forty seven would become his favorite airplane for traveling
Speaker 2: and for several years he flew it in air shows.
Speaker 2: The XB fifty two in the YB fifty two, the
Speaker 2: first prototypes of Boeing's latest century in the Strategic Bomber Sweepstakes,
Speaker 2: were ready for testing in nineteen fifty three, and Fulton
Speaker 2: was assigned to the project, which operated out of Moses Lake, Washington.
Speaker 2: Most of the time he flew the F eighty six,
Speaker 2: a pace airplane, to calibrate the new aircraft's speed and
Speaker 2: altitude readings, or the chase aircraft in the F eighty
Speaker 2: six wasn't needed, he flew on the bomber. Before long
Speaker 2: he was checked out in the XB fifty two itself.
Speaker 2: The experience with the B fifty two prototype would serve
Speaker 2: Fulton well in the years to come. Through the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: the NB fifty was the airplane he flew with an
Speaker 2: X fifteen or an experimental lifting body tucked under the
Speaker 2: bomber's starboard wing. He flew the mother ship for ninety
Speaker 2: two of the one hundred and ninety A nine X
Speaker 2: fifteen launches. In all, he was the pilot for some
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty launches of the manned aircraft. The
Speaker 2: first stage of the X plants had begun at Edwards
Speaker 2: in the nineteen forties, when the Air Force and what
Speaker 2: is now NASA began exploring the terra incognito of transsonic
Speaker 2: and supersonic flight. B twenty nine's and their descendants B
Speaker 2: fifties took off with small rocket powered aircraft on their bellies.
Speaker 2: After release, the xplane pilot lit the engine for minutes,
Speaker 2: and these long powered flights would continue it eventually well
Speaker 2: beyond mack I. Then, on empty, the little ship, equipped
Speaker 2: with skids, would glide to a dry lake landing. Fulton
Speaker 2: was a natural choice for piloting the motherships. He flew
Speaker 2: as copilot on the first two X one drops and
Speaker 2: as pilot on all his subsequent mother plane flights. He
Speaker 2: flew the B twenty nines for the slightly larger and
Speaker 2: more powerful X one A and B, and the Douglas
Speaker 2: D five fifty eight two skyrocket. Fulton flew at B
Speaker 2: fifty for the Bell X two, a hotter swept wing
Speaker 2: variant of the X one, in September nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2: The new design made Fulton's colleague mel apt the first
Speaker 2: man to fly faster than Mock three. It was App's
Speaker 2: first flight in a rocket powered airplane and his lass
Speaker 2: tumbling out of control in a supersonic turn. The X
Speaker 2: two killed him and was a sad day for all
Speaker 2: of us. Rode Fulton, and that the same high speed
Speaker 2: instability later showed up on other new high performance airplanes.
Speaker 2: The late nineteen forties was also the error of the
Speaker 2: right stuff, the term coined by the author Tom Wolf
Speaker 2: to describe the amalgam of courage, cockiness, patriotism, airmanship, and
Speaker 2: rowdiness required to be a test pilot. Fulton, although endowed
Speaker 2: with everything but the routy part. He drinks no alcohol,
Speaker 2: coffee or tea, was not really conscious that he was
Speaker 2: going to become another of aviation's golden ages. I didn't
Speaker 2: recognize it until later, he says. As far as the
Speaker 2: right stuff, everybody talked about it, says Fulton. When the
Speaker 2: film was released in nineteen eighty three, he saw the
Speaker 2: movie at the Base theater. It was good entertainment, he says,
Speaker 2: everybody laugh. The women didn't like it, says Irma, because
Speaker 2: it made us look a little stupid. Fulton had another
Speaker 2: motive for keeping clear of the cowboys side of test piloting.
Speaker 2: I was so appreciative of getting the fly airplanes to me,
Speaker 2: it was don't tilt the boat. By the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: aircraft designers had turned toward the triangular delta wing, which,
Speaker 2: while presenting some challenges at lower speeds, offered to transform
Speaker 2: the dreaded sound barrier from a wall into a membrane
Speaker 2: through which the aircraft could pass with barely a ripple.
Speaker 2: In the United States, Converair was leading the trend. Overseas,
Speaker 2: the delta wing had made its way onto Britain's Avro
Speaker 2: Vulcan and the Vickers Valiant bombers, and the Anglo French Concord.
Speaker 2: Fulton was sent to Boscombe Downs, the British counterpart to
Speaker 2: Edwards to learn from Britain's experience. He flew both the
Speaker 2: Valiant and the Vulcan, and later the Concord. Accustomed to
Speaker 2: the almost weatherless Edward sky. He was somewhat amused by
Speaker 2: the British test pilot's willingness to fly in any weather.
Speaker 2: His hosts explained that if they couldn't fly their test
Speaker 2: in English weather, they couldn't fly their tests at all.
Speaker 2: The quick trips to see Britain's delta wing bombers were
Speaker 2: in fact a prelude to Fulton's next assignment. Down in
Speaker 2: fort Worth, convey was building the Bee fifty eight Hustler,
Speaker 2: a four engine delta wing bomber with the speed and
Speaker 2: high altitude performance of a supersonic fighter. Under the fuselage,
Speaker 2: it would carry a nuclear payload in a large streamlined pod.
Speaker 2: After it dropped its bomb and discarded the pod, it
Speaker 2: would come home McLean. The Bee fifty eight had its
Speaker 2: course for one thing. There was a large amount of
Speaker 2: fuel to be wrangled. You go supersonic, you have to
Speaker 2: move the fuel aft, Fulton explains, and when you slow down,
Speaker 2: if you don't move the fuel forward, you go unstable.
Speaker 2: You spin. Some would say that they were real bad moments,
Speaker 2: he says, but these were test pilots standing in line
Speaker 2: just to fly the Bee fifty eight. Visiting General was
Speaker 2: the first Air Force pilot to fly the Bee fifty eight,
Speaker 2: and Fulton was the second. Despite its idiosyncrasies, the Hustler
Speaker 2: would become Fulton's all time favorite. It was super fast
Speaker 2: for its time, He says. I was project pilot and
Speaker 2: helped shape the airplane. And there was something else you said.
Speaker 2: I'd never considered myself a true fighter Piloty explains, but
Speaker 2: I do enjoy flying airplanes with only one seat. Eventually,
Speaker 2: Fulton became the project pilot for the Bee fifty eight
Speaker 2: at Edwards. His responsibilities included evaluating the hustler's behavior when
Speaker 2: near maximum gross waite an engine was lost on takeoff.
Speaker 2: The test involved accelerating to the decision speed and cutting
Speaker 2: one of the outboard engines at or above that speed.
Speaker 2: The pilot must continue the takeoff no matter what. On
Speaker 2: one such test, Fulton had cut an outboard engine just
Speaker 2: before taking off at one hundred and ninety knots that's
Speaker 2: around two hundred and eighteen miles per hour. When the
Speaker 2: right main gear's tires, all light of them, began to disintegrate.
Speaker 2: Fulton felt nothing in the controls, but noticed rubber fragments
Speaker 2: spewing out on his right. He continued to take off, however,
Speaker 2: and after a lookout and look over by fellow test
Speaker 2: pilots and an F one hundred, turned the hobble B
Speaker 2: fifty eight toward home. Landed at one hundred knots. He
Speaker 2: remembers not the usual one hundred and fifty pulled up
Speaker 2: the nose, pulled it up slow, set it down and
Speaker 2: dropped the nose wheels for steering. In September nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 2: Fulton flew up B fifty eight with a payload of
Speaker 2: five thousand kilograms slightly more than eleven thousand pounds to
Speaker 2: eighty five thousand, three hundred and sixty four feet, setting
Speaker 2: world records for both two thousand and five thousand kilogram payloads.
Speaker 2: For those flights and his other work with the B
Speaker 2: fifty eight, he received the International Harman Trophy, aiming him
Speaker 2: and I quote, the world's outstanding aviator for nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: two end of quote. President Lyndon Johnson awarded him the
Speaker 2: trophy at the White House in September nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: In his book, Fulton writes, during the ceremony, I was
Speaker 2: standing right behind the President and could read his notes.
Speaker 2: It was all over so quickly. The Harmon trophy is
Speaker 2: big and heavy, but I carried it back to the
Speaker 2: hotel and onto our appliant for the trip back to California.
Speaker 2: That same month saw the first flight of North American
Speaker 2: Aviation's XB seventy Valkyrie prototype, a MOCK three plus strategic
Speaker 2: bomber intended as a successor to the B fifty two,
Speaker 2: Fulton flew Chase in a B fifty eight while he
Speaker 2: and several colleagues spent a couple of years learning about
Speaker 2: the radical new bomber An airplane. He said that would
Speaker 2: be close runner up to the B fifty eight in
Speaker 2: his admiration. Fulton had by then come to an important
Speaker 2: decision regarding his career. Offered a posting to the prestigious
Speaker 2: Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama,
Speaker 2: he declined, fearing it would put him behind a desk.
Speaker 2: In April of nineteen sixty six, he filed his retirement
Speaker 2: request affected at the end of June. Meanwhile, he continued
Speaker 2: flying the Valkyrie. On June eighth of nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: Fulton was scheduled to fly the XB seventy in a
Speaker 2: test run. They would segue into a calendar photoshoot for
Speaker 2: General Electric showing a close formation of GE powered aircraft
Speaker 2: and F four B T thirty eight, F one O
Speaker 2: four n F five and the number two XB seventy prototype.
Speaker 2: But word came that a pilot was needed for an
Speaker 2: X fifteen drop from the NB fifty two, and Fulton
Speaker 2: was reassigned. The X fifteen drop was subsequently canceled, but
Speaker 2: it was too late to change the pilot roster for
Speaker 2: the XB seventy. Major Carl Cross would pilot the XB
Speaker 2: seventy with al White as copilot. The Valkyrie completed its
Speaker 2: test program and settled into a photo session for some
Speaker 2: forty minutes. All went well, but then the F one
Speaker 2: o four drifted in toward the bomber, drawn perhap apps
Speaker 2: by the XB seventy's whig vortex. The fighter bumped a
Speaker 2: larger airplanes wing, then nosed up and inverted raked across
Speaker 2: the bomber, shearing off all of one of the vertical
Speaker 2: stabilizers and most of the other. The F one o
Speaker 2: four pilot was killed second later, the Valkyrie rolled into
Speaker 2: a violent spin, losing part of one wing. Al White
Speaker 2: successfully ejected in his escape capsule. Carl Cross went down
Speaker 2: with the aircraft. I've always thought that if I had
Speaker 2: been on that flight, it wouldn't have happened, Fulton says,
Speaker 2: adding that it wasn't his abilities that it would have
Speaker 2: prevented the accident. You changed the players, you changed the outcome.
Speaker 2: NASA wasn't quite finished with the Valkyrie. It wanted to
Speaker 2: use the remaining prototype in a high speed flight research
Speaker 2: program with the Air Force. Fulton, now a retired Air
Speaker 2: Force lieutenant colonel, came to NASA with the airplane as
Speaker 2: primary project pilot, working with Donald Malick, then a research
Speaker 2: pilot at NASA's Edwards based Dryden Flight Research Center. Like
Speaker 2: everyone in the test program in the pilot community, Malick
Speaker 2: had heard of Fulton, but this was the men's first
Speaker 2: time working together. Fulton and Colonel Joe Cotton, who'd been
Speaker 2: the primary Air Force pilot in the Valkyrie, began a
Speaker 2: checkout program for Malick and Lieutenant Colonel Ted Stermthal Flying
Speaker 2: the XB seventy was quite an experience for me, Malick said.
Speaker 2: Fitz and Colonel Cotton were the instructor pilots. Ted and
Speaker 2: I flew with one of them and all the test flights,
Speaker 2: a senior pilot and a junior pilot. I flew a
Speaker 2: total of nine flights. I was able to fly four
Speaker 2: of these flights from the left seat, and I was
Speaker 2: proud that Fitz did not look on me as just
Speaker 2: a co pilot. He shared the flying and the testing.
Speaker 2: Fulton and Malick would then fly something even hotter, the
Speaker 2: lockeyed Blackbird, in the form of the YF twelve A
Speaker 2: and the YF twelve SE, which was actually the highly
Speaker 2: classified SR seventy one in the skies. The pilots each
Speaker 2: made more than one hundred flights in the Blackbird. Fitz
Speaker 2: and I alternated flights for a most ten years from
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy nine, says Malik. I always
Speaker 2: had the feeling that I was a better pilot because
Speaker 2: I was able to fly with him and share programs
Speaker 2: like the Blackbirds. As the Blackbird research ended, they arranged
Speaker 2: for an unforgettable going away present for their comrades. As
Speaker 2: before the last YF twelve was returned to the Air Force,
Speaker 2: they led each pilot in the office fly the Blackbird
Speaker 2: to Mock three. A key element in developing NASA's Space
Speaker 2: Shuttle was finding a way to airlift the orbiter. NASA
Speaker 2: chose a Stock seven forty seven to one hundred name
Speaker 2: primary NASA project pilot Fulton. He checked out in the
Speaker 2: seven forty seven. I felt fully qualified, but was surprised
Speaker 2: that so little time in the airplane was needed to
Speaker 2: make it legal for me to fly it, Fulton writes
Speaker 2: in his book. All he needed was a thirty minute
Speaker 2: flight and one landing. NASA nine oh five, as the
Speaker 2: first shuttle carrier was called, was flown to Seattle for
Speaker 2: nine months of modification at the Boeing Factory. Its first
Speaker 2: flight with the shuttle was made in February of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven, with Enterprise attached to struts on the seven
Speaker 2: forty seven's upper fuselage. A few months later, the seven
Speaker 2: explosive bolts tethering the shuttle were triggered and Enterprise soared
Speaker 2: away on its historic wide to the Edwards runway. The
Speaker 2: seven forty seven had a strong pitch down when the
Speaker 2: release occurred, Writes Folded in his book. I had to
Speaker 2: pull the control column aft with about ninety to one
Speaker 2: hundred pounds of force. There was still a slight increase
Speaker 2: in the nose down pitch trim. The indicated airspeed increased
Speaker 2: to approximately three hundred and twenty knots for a few seconds,
Speaker 2: just like a glider releasing from its toeplane. The shuttle
Speaker 2: turned to the right after launch, and we turned to
Speaker 2: the left. The Shuttle seven forty seven combos NASA operated
Speaker 2: two of them, remained an amazing sight to the end,
Speaker 2: and never more so on the final flight across the
Speaker 2: United States in twenty twelve. By then they had taken
Speaker 2: many a star turn, not the one at the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three Paris Air Show, where Fulton flew the mother
Speaker 2: plane with the orbiter for the crowds every day. Fulton
Speaker 2: retired from NASA in nineteen eighty six, then spent three
Speaker 2: years as a test pilot for Bert Rutan's scale composites
Speaker 2: in Jjave, California. He and Irma lived in Thousand Oaks, California,
Speaker 2: nearly an hour's drive from Edwards. Grounded by Parkinson's disease,
Speaker 2: he misses having an airplane in his life. I'd still
Speaker 2: be flying if I could pass the physical, he says.
Speaker 2: Although he flew transports and bombers throughout his career, Fulton
Speaker 2: ever quite got over the glovelike fit of smaller aircraft.
Speaker 2: He owned a fair Child twenty four and because he
Speaker 2: wanted a four seater in which he could teach his
Speaker 2: family to fly, Assessina one seventy two. His last airplane
Speaker 2: was a Meyer little toot Home built, a tiny biplane
Speaker 2: he saw after delivering the first Shuttle to the Kennedy
Speaker 2: Space Center in Florida. While technicians practiced loading the Orbiter
Speaker 2: onto the carrier and unloading it. Fulton wandered off to
Speaker 2: it nearby airfield where he saw the Little Tout. He
Speaker 2: thought it was a good looking airplane that would be
Speaker 2: fun to fly back at. Edwards, he and Irma decided
Speaker 2: to buy it. He returned and picked up the Little
Speaker 2: Too for a five day ferry back to California. The
Speaker 2: Georgia Boy and his biplane, the Doctor Sky and Photo
Speaker 2: Reconsalute to the greatest test pilot you never heard of,
Speaker 2: retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel fitz Fulton. A
Speaker 2: reread of an article by Carl Posey of Air and
Speaker 2: Space Magazine, December of twenty thirteen,