Contrails over the Mojave
In Contrails over the Mojave George Marrett takes off where Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff ended in 1963. Marrett started the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB only two weeks after the school's commander, Col. Chuck Yeager, ejected from a Lockheed NF-104 trying to set a world altitude record. He describes life as a space cadet experiencing 15 Gs in a human centrifuge, zero-G maneuvers in a KC-135 “Vomit Comet,” and a flight to 80,000 feet in the F-104A Starfighter. After graduating from Yeager's “Charm School,” he was assigned to the Fighter Branch of Flight Test Operations, where he flew the latest fighter aircraft and chased other test aircraft as they set world speed and altitude records. Marrett takes readers into the cockpit as he “goes vertical” in a T-38 Talon, completes high-G maneuvers in an F-4C Phantom, and conducts wet-runway landing tests in the accident-prone F-111A Aardvark. He writes about Col. “Silver Fox” Stephens setting a world speed record in the YF-12 Blackbird and Bob Gilliland testing speed stalls in the SR-71 spy plane, but he also relives stories of crashes that killed test pilot friends. He recounts dead-sticking a T-38 to a landing on Rogers Dry Lake after a twin-engine failure and conducting dangerous tail hook barrier testing in a fighter jet without a canopy. A mysterious UFO sighting in the night sky above the Mojave Desert, known as “The Edwards Encounter,” also receives Marrett's attention. Whether the author is assessing a new aircraft's performance or describing the experiences of test pilots as they routinely faced the possibility of death, this look at the golden age of flight testing both thrills and informs.
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Contrails over the Mojave
In Contrails over the Mojave George Marrett takes off where Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff ended in 1963. Marrett started the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB only two weeks after the school's commander, Col. Chuck Yeager, ejected from a Lockheed NF-104 trying to set a world altitude record. He describes life as a space cadet experiencing 15 Gs in a human centrifuge, zero-G maneuvers in a KC-135 “Vomit Comet,” and a flight to 80,000 feet in the F-104A Starfighter. After graduating from Yeager's “Charm School,” he was assigned to the Fighter Branch of Flight Test Operations, where he flew the latest fighter aircraft and chased other test aircraft as they set world speed and altitude records. Marrett takes readers into the cockpit as he “goes vertical” in a T-38 Talon, completes high-G maneuvers in an F-4C Phantom, and conducts wet-runway landing tests in the accident-prone F-111A Aardvark. He writes about Col. “Silver Fox” Stephens setting a world speed record in the YF-12 Blackbird and Bob Gilliland testing speed stalls in the SR-71 spy plane, but he also relives stories of crashes that killed test pilot friends. He recounts dead-sticking a T-38 to a landing on Rogers Dry Lake after a twin-engine failure and conducting dangerous tail hook barrier testing in a fighter jet without a canopy. A mysterious UFO sighting in the night sky above the Mojave Desert, known as “The Edwards Encounter,” also receives Marrett's attention. Whether the author is assessing a new aircraft's performance or describing the experiences of test pilots as they routinely faced the possibility of death, this look at the golden age of flight testing both thrills and informs.
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Contrails over the Mojave

Contrails over the Mojave

by George J Marrett
Contrails over the Mojave

Contrails over the Mojave

by George J Marrett

Overview

In Contrails over the Mojave George Marrett takes off where Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff ended in 1963. Marrett started the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB only two weeks after the school's commander, Col. Chuck Yeager, ejected from a Lockheed NF-104 trying to set a world altitude record. He describes life as a space cadet experiencing 15 Gs in a human centrifuge, zero-G maneuvers in a KC-135 “Vomit Comet,” and a flight to 80,000 feet in the F-104A Starfighter. After graduating from Yeager's “Charm School,” he was assigned to the Fighter Branch of Flight Test Operations, where he flew the latest fighter aircraft and chased other test aircraft as they set world speed and altitude records. Marrett takes readers into the cockpit as he “goes vertical” in a T-38 Talon, completes high-G maneuvers in an F-4C Phantom, and conducts wet-runway landing tests in the accident-prone F-111A Aardvark. He writes about Col. “Silver Fox” Stephens setting a world speed record in the YF-12 Blackbird and Bob Gilliland testing speed stalls in the SR-71 spy plane, but he also relives stories of crashes that killed test pilot friends. He recounts dead-sticking a T-38 to a landing on Rogers Dry Lake after a twin-engine failure and conducting dangerous tail hook barrier testing in a fighter jet without a canopy. A mysterious UFO sighting in the night sky above the Mojave Desert, known as “The Edwards Encounter,” also receives Marrett's attention. Whether the author is assessing a new aircraft's performance or describing the experiences of test pilots as they routinely faced the possibility of death, this look at the golden age of flight testing both thrills and informs.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781612514277
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Publication date: 07/15/2014
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 272
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

George J. Marrett flew 188 missions in the Douglas A-1 Skyraider in Vietnam and tested more than forty types of military aircraft in twenty-five years as a test pilot for the U.S. Air Force and Hughes Aircraft Company. He is a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and the Board of Trustees, National Test Pilot School, Mojave, California. Marrett is also the author of Howard Hughes: Aviator; Cheating Death: Combat Air Rescues in Vietnam and Laos, and Testing Death: Hughes Aircraft Test Pilots and Cold War Weaponry. Now retired, he lives in Atascadero, California.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xvii

Chapter 1 Don't Kill Yourself 1

Chapter 2 Chasing the Whistle 9

Chapter 3 USAF Flight School 20

Chapter 4 Defending the Golden Gate 30

Chapter 5 Cold War 41

Chapter 6 Charm School 59

Chapter 7 Space Cadets 74

Chapter 8 Flight Test Operations 90

Chapter 9 Fighter Branch 113

Chapter 10 Phantom Foibles 137

Chapter 11 Metal Falling from the Sky 158

Epilogue 187

Acronyms and Abbreviations 217

Notes 219

Resources 221

Index 225

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