• October 2, 1921: Born in Berkeley, California
• 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.

FMI: www.nasa.gov