<\/p>\n
An American hero and aviation icon passed away today, John Glenn.<\/p>\n
Glenn is most famously remembered as the first American to orbit the earth in a spacecraft.\u00a0 He accomplished the feat on February 20, 1962 aboard the Friendship 7.\u00a0 The most interesting part of the flight is when a warning indicated that the heat shield onboard the spacecraft may come lose.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Engineers directed Glenn to keep the retrorocket pack in place over the shield to help ensure that the shield stayed in place.\u00a0 Glenn survived and it was later determined that a faulty light caused the warning.<\/p>\n
John Glenn should be remembered for much more than the Friendship 7.\u00a0 He piloted a F4U Corsair to 59 combat missions in the Pacific during World War II.\u00a0 In the Korea Conflict he joined Neil Armstrong in flying the Navy\u2019s newest jet, the F9F Panther.\u00a0 Glen was legendary for the enemy flack that his aircraft seemed to attract.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 As the 50s closed, the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite setting off the Space Race, a race that would dominate the 1960s.\u00a0 Hundreds of top military pilots were evaluated to become America\u2019s first astronauts.\u00a0 John Glenn was one of first seven chosen\u2014becoming the Mercury Seven.\u00a0 Glenn, at his death, was the last surviving member of that group.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Glenn served many years in the United States Senator, but should be best remembered as a patriot and a solid citizen.\u00a0 He gained fame paired with Eddie Hodges on the game show Name That Tune in 1957.\u00a0 I drove down the street named for Glenn near Wright Patterson AFB many times as an Air Force officer.<\/p>\n
However, I believe his finest hour was in debating Howard Metzenbaum, a liberal candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for Senate in 1974.\u00a0 Metzenbaum scoffed at the fact that Glenn had earned a living in the military and at NASA.\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 Well said.<\/p>\n
Godspeed John Glenn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0 He accomplished the feat on February 20, 1962 aboard the Friendship 7.\u00a0 The most interesting part of the flight is when a warning indicated that the heat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":338,"featured_media":1769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[24],"tags":[202,266,267],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n