Contrails Over the Mojave: The Golden Era of Jet Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base - Hardcover

Marrett, George J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1591145112 ISBN 13: 9781591145110

Publisher: Naval Institute Press, 2008

Synopsis

In Contrails over the Mojave, Marrett takes off where author Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff ended in 1963. Marrett started the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB in 1964, 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 a Lockheed F-104A Starfighter. After graduating from Yeager’s “Charm School,” he was assigned to the Fighter Branch of Flight Test Operations for three years. There he flew the Air Force’s latest fighter aircraft and chased other test aircraft like the X-15 rocket ship and the XB-70A Valkyrie as they set world speed and altitude records. Marrett takes you into the cockpit with him“going vertical” in a T-38 Talon, high G maneuvering in an F-4C Phantom, wet runway landing tests in the accident-prone F-111A Aardvark, and witnessing a XB-70A Valkyrie burning on the ground after a midair collision. Marrett relives stories of crashes when his test pilot friends were killed. He writes about Air Force test pilot Col. “Silver Fox” Stephens setting a world speed record in the YF-12 Blackbird and Lockheed test pilot Bob Gilliland flying a single-engine, minimum-control speed stall in the SR-71 spy plane. 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. Marrett also writes about a UFO sighting in the night sky above the Mojave Desert, a mysterious sighting now referred to as “The Edwards Encounter.”

About this title

About the Author

GEORGE J. MARRETT served in the U.S. Air Force and flew the F-86L SabreJet, the F-101B Voodoo, and the Douglas A-1 Skyraider, this last as a Sandy rescue pilot in the 602nd Fighter Squadron (Commando) in Thailand, completing 188 combat missions in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Currently, he flies his 1945 Stinson L-5E Sentinel for air shows. He is the author of Cheating Death: Combat Air Rescues in Vietnam and Laos and Howard Hughes: Aviator.

Edition details

• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1591145112
• ISBN 13: 9781591145110
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264