Fall, 1940: Matriculates at University of
Washington as an Aeronautical Engineering student
Spring, 1942: Joins the US Navy as an Air
Cadet
1943: Commissioned Ensign and awarded his
Wings of Gold
1944-45: Six months overseas service, no
combat; instructor duty in SNJ, F6F, F4U
1946: Back to Washington. Works in UW's
Kirsten Wind Tunnel; serves in Navy Reserve flying FG-1D
1949: Graduated, Bachelor of Science in
Aeronautical Engineering
1950: Master of Science in Aeronautical
Science
June, 1950: Crossfield joined NACA as a
research pilot
1950-55: Conducts 99 rocket-X-plane flights,
although 12 of them in the D-558-2 under turbojet power only. Flies
X-1, X-4, X-5, XF-84, XF-92A, F-100, XF-107 among others.
1955: Leaves NASA and joins North American
Aviation as pilot and engineer on the X-15 program.
1959-60: Conducts 16 captive, one glide, 13
powered X-15 flights. Reaches M2.97, 81,000 ft MSL.
1955-67: Serves in a series of increasingly
important leadership, engineering management, and quality assurance
roles at North American, increasingly a space company.
1967: One of many careers that ended at NA
after the disastrous fire on the Apollo 1 Command Module killed
astronauts White, Grissom and Chafee. Crossfield had been
responsible for the Command and Service modules and quality
assurance, and had recently been promoted to technical director for
research engineering and test.
Jan 27 1967: Command Module Fire
March 1967: Weakened North American merges with Rockwell
and layoffs begin.
1968-73: Eastern Airlines, executive VP.
Responsible for integrating several technological advances into the
Eastern fleet.
1974-77: Hawker Siddeley Aviation, executive
VP for North American operations, introducing the HS (later BAe)
146 regional jet.
1977-93: Consultant, House Committee on
Science and Technology, US Congress
1993-2006: In retirement, sought-after
speaker, panel member, and participant in aviation events.
2003: Participates in "Countdown to Kitty
Hawk" Wright Bros. reenactment. Learns to fly the 1902 Wright
glider.
2005: Along with Mike Melvill, gives
entertaining Theater In The Woods presentation at Oshkosh 2005
(above), describing and contrasting the men's experiences in their
respective suborbital vehicles: the X-15 and SpaceShipOne (you may
listen to ANN's Aero-Cast of that presentation here)
April 19, 2006: Found dead in the wreckage of
his Cessna 210A.
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