The X-15 Rocket Plane: Flying the First Wings into Space

3. Gaining Speed

3. Gaining Speed There’s lots of unknowns, so the imperative is to equip yourself to be the very best you can. That’s when things really start rolling. Robert M. White “He was about as opposite of [Joe] Walker as could be. I don’t mean this in a derogatory manner at all, but Kincheloe was a real salesman on himself. He had me sold just as much as everybody else.” Paul Bikle was talking of Capt. Iven Carl Kincheloe Jr., who was to be the prime pilot for the x-15 program, chosen by the U.S. Air Force in September 1957. By the time “Kinch,” as he was best known, got to that point, he had already made a name for himself as a Silver Star recipient and Korean War air ace. He earned that honor shooting down five MiG-15s in less than four months in his North American f-86 Sabre. As flight commander of the 25th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Kinch then went on to destroy five more North Korean fighters before his tour ended. Several years after the war, he also garnered a world altitude record as a rocket pilot, achieving 126,282 feet in his fourth flight of the Bell x-2 on 27 September 1956. For this, the press dubbed him “The First of the Spacemen.” Kincheloe was literally the air force’s fair-haired poster boy, and he was making the most of it. He once appeared on The Arthur Godfrey Show and was asked, “Are you sure you haven’t been selected by some Hollywood casting director to play the part of a test pilot?” A native of Detroit, Michigan, born 2 July 1928, he graduated in 1949 from Purdue University, then went immediately into the air force, earning his wings a year later. While in Korea, he survived 131 combat missions before rotating stateside. Soon after the war, Kincheloe received air force per- gaining speed | 69 mission to attend the Empire Test Pilots’ School in Farnborough, England, graduating in January 1955. With all this behind him, and once he secured his reputation in the x-2 at Edwards, there was no doubt the x-15 was in his future. I asked Bikle if Kincheloe had actively sought out the x-15 assignment . Paul said, “I’m sure he did. Everybody did. Hell, that was what you were there for.” Walt Williams was running the x-15 at the time Kincheloe came aboard. He said, “I invited Kinch on a weekend fishing trip with a bunch of bigwigs from nasa and North American Aviation. Kinch wanted to go at first and had even put up a deposit. He really enjoyed hobnobbing with the biggies. For some reason, he canceled out at the last minute. Don’t know if maybe he felt he’d gotten in over his head or something.” Whatever happened to make him change his mind, it was a fateful decision. Williams related what happened on Saturday, 26 July 1958: “That weekend, he pulled ‘duty pilot ’ and was scheduled to do chase for a test flight on an f-100 mission out of Palmdale [for pilot Lou Schaik]. The flight was canceled, but the word didn’t get back to Kinch fast enough.” Immediately after leaving the runway, a mechanical failure prevented the engine from gaining thrust, so he was unable to climb to safety. Kincheloe radioed, “Edwards, Mayday, 7-7-2 bailing out!” Because of the high T-tail on the f-104, the ejection seat was designed to fire downward. Understanding he couldn’t get airspeed and altitude, Kinch rolled inverted, so as to not eject directly into the ground. The seat activated properly, but the plane had not gone completely upside down, and he was simply too low for his parachute to deploy fully before he hit. Less than three minutes after the 9:47 a.m. takeoff, Kincheloe died on impact, the seventh person killed by the f-104 in the span of four years since its initial flight. “I found out when I returned from the fishing trip that he’d been killed,” Williams said. “That was definitely a case where someone was killed flying when he should have been fishing.” Butchart was one of those with Williams that weekend. He said, “If Kinch had gone fishing with us, like he was going to do, he’d be here today. . . . The future was all ahead of him. He really hadn’t done...