Comments by "jim oberg" (@jimoberg3326) on "The New York Times"
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Re Captain Dwight: NASA never spent a dime on him, he was in the Air Force taking two back-to-back six-month courses in aerospace test piloting. He finished them both and got assigned as chief of test piloting for the branch he' served in, the US Bomber Command.
In later years Dwight complained he had been viciously opposed by the school commandant, the legendary Chuck Yeager, who according to Dwight [based on third-hand hearsay] had instructed the other students to shun and isolate Dwight to drive him out. But not even the NY Times could find a single actual witness to this order, nor any actual actions to implement it [Dwight graduated on schedule]. Yeager vigorously denied ever saying it, and black pilots who actually flew with him vigorously denied he'd shown any indications of racial bias -- want a link?].
The top two pilots of that test pilot [NOT 'astronaut'] class were picked by NASA for its own 1963 astronaut group. Dwight indicated to the NY Times that his class standing wasn't so high but he thought he had a legitimate excuse in that the White House wanted him to take three-day weekends all that year to fly around the country giving speeches, while all the other students stayed on base studying and flying [In Dwight's autobiography he blames Yeager for permitting him to go, as a mean trick to sabotage his studies]. According to the NY Times, quoting Dwight, selecting for the highest demonstrated flying skill levels wasn't really important anyway since the spacecraft was continuously under remote control from Houston and the astronaut was only a passive passenger anyway [which was most emphatically NOT true, something the NY Times failed to notice].
Nevertheless the NY Times implied a cause-and-effect by reporting that after JFK was killed, 'within a month Dwight's career at Edwards AFB was over" [and he was transferred out] when he wasn't picked as one of the candidates that NASA wanted. But that selection had already been made two months BEFORE the assassination, and Dwight's class at the school at Edwards had always been scheduled to end in December. At that point, all the graduates were assigned to test pilot duty in important positions [Dwight was sent to Wright-Patterson AFB as 'Deputy for Flight Test' for the US Bomber Command, hardly a punishment].
So there's serious political spinning going on in this sad story, too, I'm afraid.
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@LucDevine -- I'm looking for real evidence in a very culturally incendiary meme, as a historian. … in exactly the threads where strong believers congregate and engage in productive debate [and thank you for doing so]. As for journalists, the original NY Times story last July was shamefully sloppy, which was regrettable. Probably the worst howler there was endorsement of Dwight's erroneous assertion that test piloting skill and experience really wasn't relevant to astronaut selection, since the capsules were fully remote-controlled from Houston anyway, so the passengers could easily have been picked for symbolic reasons, not technical capabilities. So... are there no direct witness accounts of the third-hand hearsay about Yeager's shunning advice? I'm still looking -- perhaps the most reasonable theory is he made same comment of tolerating Dwight until the course finished nd then he'd be gone. The one-on-one in-your-face suggestions of quitting, BTW, was pretty standard with Yeager's approach to every student, and it's the same in Navy SEAL training. Hand-holding and soothing and participation trophies may be what kids want today, but it's not good prep for professions with death peering over your shoulder.
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