Dec 8th, 2016

John Glenn Tribute

Posted in Aviation News

 

An American hero and aviation icon passed away today, John Glenn.

Glenn is most famously remembered as the first American to orbit the earth in a spacecraft.  He accomplished the feat on February 20, 1962 aboard the Friendship 7.  The most interesting part of the flight is when a warning indicated that the heat shield onboard the spacecraft may come lose.  If the heat shield did come lose, Glen would be burned up as the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere with the accompany friction causing high heat levels.  Engineers directed Glenn to keep the retrorocket pack in place over the shield to help ensure that the shield stayed in place.  Glenn survived and it was later determined that a faulty light caused the warning.

John Glenn should be remembered for much more than the Friendship 7.  He piloted a F4U Corsair to 59 combat missions in the Pacific during World War II.  In the Korea Conflict he joined Neil Armstrong in flying the Navy’s newest jet, the F9F Panther.  Glen was legendary for the enemy flack that his aircraft seemed to attract.  He did a second tour in Korea with the Air Force (Glen was in the Navy) flying the F-86 Sabre and downing several MIG-15s.

After the war, John Glenn had a record setting flight aboard the F-8 Crusader averaging supersonic speed all the way across the United States.  As the 50s closed, the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite setting off the Space Race, a race that would dominate the 1960s.  Hundreds of top military pilots were evaluated to become America’s first astronauts.  John Glenn was one of first seven chosen—becoming the Mercury Seven.  Glenn, at his death, was the last surviving member of that group.

Later as a senator, John Glenn flew aboard the Space Shuttle on October 28, 1998, the oldest person to fly in space at age 77.  Glenn served many years in the United States Senator, but should be best remembered as a patriot and a solid citizen.  He gained fame paired with Eddie Hodges on the game show Name That Tune in 1957.  I drove down the street named for Glenn near Wright Patterson AFB many times as an Air Force officer.

However, I believe his finest hour was in debating Howard Metzenbaum, a liberal candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for Senate in 1974.  Metzenbaum scoffed at the fact that Glenn had earned a living in the military and at NASA.  Glenn responded with the following, “look those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn’t hold a job. You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job.”  Well said.

Godspeed John Glenn

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