Neil Armstrong inadvertently pulled too high an angle of attack during the pullout. The X-15 flight path took a bounce in the atmosphere, and he overshot the Edwards Air Force Base, heading south at Mach 3 and 100,000 feet.
Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon; therefore, he is known and respected worldwide.
As noted by John Anderson and Richard Passman in their book X-15: The World’s Fastest Rocket Plane and the Pilots Who Ushered in the Space Age, Armstrong stood out as an unusual figure among the X-15 test pilots. Following in the footsteps of Rob Rushworth, who completed a total of thirty-four flights in the X-15, Armstrong, the seventh pilot, made only seven flights in the aircraft. Similar to Scott Crossfield, Neil Armstrong was primarily an aeronautical engineer. Even during his tenure as a test pilot with NASA, he was recognized as one of their top engineering experts.
Neil Armstrong’s initial flight in the X-15, which was a typical pilot-familiarization flight, occurred on November 30, 1960, during which he achieved a speed of Mach 1.75 and an altitude of 48,840 feet. The upper No. 3 chamber of the rocket engine failed to start, and the inertial altitude readings were inaccurate. His second flight took place just nine days later, where he assessed a new ball nose design for the aircraft and gathered stability and control data. Nearly a year later, on December 20, 1961, Armstrong completed his third flight, which involved the checkout of the No. 3 airplane.
On April 20, 1962, Armstrong completed the longest flight of the X-15 program, lasting 12 minutes and 28 seconds. During this same flight, he reached his highest altitude of 207,500 feet. Upon returning, Armstrong accidentally pulled too high an angle of attack during his pullout. This caused his flight path to bounce in the atmosphere, leading him to overshoot Edwards Air Force Base while traveling south at Mach 3 and 100,000 feet. He managed to turn back while flying over the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Nearly out of kinetic and potential energy, he barely succeeded in reaching the south end of Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards.
As told in James Hansen’s biography First Man:
‘On Friday, April 20, 1962, Armstrong zoomed up to 207,500 feet in the X-15, as high as he’d go until his Gemini 8 mission would quadruple that four years later. Well outside the atmosphere, he used the reaction control system to maneuver. Another job on this flight was to check out the MH-96, a G-limiting device designed to keep the rocket plane from exceeding 5 Gs. He kept the nose up as he plummeted from his peak altitude, which caused his flight path to “balloon,” or rise again, producing about 4 Gs. This ballooning continued as he waited to see the G-limiter kick in, which it never did. It turned out that the real flight was not agreeing with the simulations he’d done on the ground. All the while, he was cruising along at the rate of ten football fields a second toward Los Angeles and still up around 140,000 feet. Soon he heard the main flight control center telling him as they watched his telemetry, “We show you ballooning, not turning. Hard left turn, Neil! Hard left turn!” By then, Armstrong had, in his own words, gone “sailing merrily by the field.”’
Armstrong recorded his fastest flight in the X-15 on July 26, 1962, reaching a speed of Mach 5.74. This flight marked the end of his X-15 activities, as he was chosen for NASA’s Astronaut Corps on September 13, making him the only civilian pilot in the program at that time. Consequently, Armstrong’s career took a significant turn, leading to his historic footsteps on the moon. That moment happened on July 20, 1969, less than a year after the conclusion of the X-15 program.
Photo by NASA
