Johnny McDonald

Taking flight and making history

Spanning the skies at 4.71 Mach speeds in the experimental X-15, space shuttle explorations, and piloting a 65-horsepower Piper Cub have all been career contrasts for retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Joe Engle.

He’s logged more than 14,700 hours of flight time. That’s a sampling of more than 185 different types of aircraft, including 25 fighters, where his fingers have been at the controls.

Solid credentials for him to join seven other inductees into the International Air and Space Hall of Fame, planned for the Museum’s Pavilion of Flight on Nov. 1.

Since 1963, the Hall has honored more than 200 of the world’s most significant pilots, crewmembers, visionaries, inventors, aerospace engineers, business leaders, preservationists, designers and space pioneers.

This year’s class also includes Fitz Fulton, test pilot on the XB-70 Supersonic Bomber/B-58 Hustler; Bill Boeing, Jr., influential preservationist of air and space history; retired Marine General and aviator John (Jack) R. Dailey, director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: The Ninety-Nines, an international women’s pilot fraternity whose first president was Amelia Earhart; WD-40, a company that played a significant role in the quest to protect the Atlas Rocket, and a world renowned name in lubricants; Roger Schaufele, innovative aircraft engineer/designer and stunt pilot Bessie Coleman.

Engle, the eighth pilot to fly the X-15, reached Mach 4.71 and an altitude of 77,000 feet on Oct. 7, 1963. He entered the history books on June 29, 1965, when he flew the X-15 to an altitude of 280,600 feet. Twice more before that year ended, he would pilot the rocket-powered aerospace plane more than 50 miles above the Earth’s surface.

“We’re especially pleased to honor this exemplary class of 2014 because these pioneers have not only pushed back the frontiers of air and space exploration, they’ve also become strong positive role models for today’s youth,” said Jim Kidrick, San Diego Air and Space Museum president and CEO.

Milestones are something Engle understands, as he frequently reached them during his experiences with the X-15 as a pilot of the prototype space shuttle Enterprise during 1977 approach and landing tests at Edwards Air Force Base, and as commander of two space shuttle orbital missions.

“It was the ultimate flying machine,” he said. “No airplane can live up to what the X-15 did.”

A key contribution of the X-15 flight research program was to help engineers develop confidence that an unpowered spacecraft could glide to a safe landing on earth. Also, the maneuvers used to slow the X-15 were nearly identical to those of the space shuttle from Mach 6 to landing.

Launched from beneath the wing of a modified B-52, the X-15 was the first piloted aircraft to exceed Mach 4, 5 and 6.

“My first flight was a highlight,” he commented in a telephone interview from his Houston NASA office. “It was a relatively benign profile as far as speed and altitude, but benign in the X-15 was several orders of magnitude faster and higher than I’d ever been. Altitude flights were the ones I enjoyed.

“All X-15 flights were as exciting and busy as can be,” he said. “There just wasn’t time to sit and look around much.”

Emgle is currently an engineering consultant and technical advisor on space vehicles and space operations and is serving as technical advisor to NASA’s International Space Station Advisory Committee.

“The only plane I personally owned was the Piper Cub, but that was just to teach my son to fly,” Engle said.

At 32, Engle was the youngest test pilot. Now, 50 years later, he’s the only one still alive.

Elsewhere in the Park — Reuben H. Fleet Science Center will host the West Coast premiere of “Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code.” Visitors can explore what the genome is, its scale and structure, and how genomics plays a role in modern life. The exhibition shows how genomics has added to archaeological and fossil evidence, not only increasing knowledge of human origins but also helping to answer questions about recent ancestry … San Diego Auto Museum’s Research Director Kenn Colclasure wondered why people wanted to chop up cars — vintage 1950s — as an expression of some art. So he’ll parade 12  “lead sleds” onto the floor of the Museum for the next three months. Colclasure is calling it Art on Wheels. “If I can get a couple more show stoppers, I’m going to crowd them in,” he said. “I’ve got ‘50 Mercs, dropped way down and painted primer black.”

—After an award winning, 38-year sports-writing career with the San Diego Union and authoring three books, Johnny McDonald now considers writing a hobby. You can reach him at [email protected].