Military service During World War II, Walker flew the
Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter and
F-5A Lightning photo aircraft (a modified P-38) on weather
reconnaissance flights. Walker earned the
Distinguished Flying Cross once, awarded by
General Nathan Twining in July 1944, and the
Air Medal with seven
oak leaf clusters.
Test pilot career with the
X-1E After World War II, Walker separated from the Army Air Forces and joined the
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)
Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory in
Cleveland, Ohio, as an experimental physicist. While in Cleveland, Walker became a test pilot, and he conducted icing research in flight, as well as in the NACA icing wind tunnel. He transferred to the High-Speed Flight Research Station in
Edwards, California, in 1951. Walker served for 15 years at the Edwards Flight Research Facility – now called the
Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center. By the mid-1950s, he was a Chief Research Pilot. Walker worked on several pioneering research projects. He flew in three versions of the
Bell X-1: the X-1#2 (two flights, first on August 27, 1951), X-1A (one flight), X-1E (21 flights). When Walker attempted a second flight in the X-1A on August 8, 1955, the rocket aircraft was damaged in an explosion just before being launched from the
JTB-29A mothership. Walker was unhurt, though, and he climbed back into the mothership with the X-1A subsequently jettisoned. Other research aircraft that he flew were the
Douglas D-558-I Skystreak #3 (14 flights),
Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket #2 (three flights), D-558-II #3 (two flights),
Douglas X-3 Stiletto (20 flights),
Northrop X-4 Bantam (two flights), and
Bell X-5 (78 flights). Walker was the chief project pilot for the X-3 program. Walker reportedly considered the X-3 to be the worst airplane that he ever flew. In addition to research aircraft, Walker flew many
chase planes during test flights of other aircraft, and he also flew in programs that involved the
North American F-100 Super Sabre,
McDonnell F-101 Voodoo,
Convair F-102 Delta Dagger,
Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and
Boeing B-47 Stratojet.
X-15 program In 1958, Walker was one of the pilots selected for the U.S. Air Force's
Man In Space Soonest (MISS) project, but that project never came to fruition. That same year, NACA became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and in 1960, Walker became the first NASA pilot to fly the X-15, and the second X-15 pilot, following
Scott Crossfield, the manufacturer's test pilot. On his first X-15 flight, Walker did not realize how much power its rocket engines had, and he was crushed backward into the pilot's seat, screaming, "Oh, my God!". Then, a flight controller jokingly replied "Yes? You called?" Walker would go on to fly the X-15 25 times, including the first flight of a human into the
mesosphere,
Flight 35, and the only two flights that exceeded in altitude,
Flight 90 (on July 19, 1963: ) and
Flight 91 (on August 22, 1963: ). Walker was the first American civilian to make any spaceflight, and the second civilian overall, preceded only by the
Soviet Union's
cosmonaut,
Valentina Tereshkova one month earlier. Flights 90 and 91 made Walker the first human to make multiple spaceflights according to the
FAI definition of greater than 100 km (62 mi). Flight 77 on January 17, 1963 also qualified Walker as an astronaut, according to the US Department of Defense definition of greater than 50 mi (80 km). Walker flew at his highest speed in the X-15A-1: (
Mach 5.92) during Flight 59 on June 27, 1962 (the fastest flight in any of the three X-15s was about (Mach 6.7) during Flight 188 flown by
William J. Knight on October 3, 1967).
LLRV program Walker also became the first test pilot of the Bell
Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV), which was used to develop piloting and operational techniques for lunar landings. On October 30, 1964, Walker took the LLRV on its maiden flight, reaching an altitude of about 10 ft and a total flight time of just under one minute. He piloted 35 LLRV flights in total.
Neil Armstrong later flew this craft many times in preparation for the
spaceflight of
Apollo 11 – the first human landing on the Moon – including crashing it once and barely escaping from it with his ejection seat. ==Death==