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Contact Info
Home Town Dayton, Ohio
Last Address Saint Louis, Missouri
Date of Passing Feb 28, 1966
Wall/Plot Coordinates Section 4, Lot 195 Grid AA-11.5
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Unofficial Badges
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Gemini IX Astronaut. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, and attended Ohio State University from 1950 to 1952. He then entered the United States Air Force as an Aviation Cadet. He trained at Stallings Air Force Base, North Carolina, Bryan Air Force Base, Texas, and Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, completing advanced work in April 1954. He went to the Pacific with the 8th Fighter Bomber Group and was promoted to First Lieutenant in May 1955. He returned for pilot duties at Suffolk County Air Force Base, New York, serving until April 1958 when he took the electrical engineering course at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. From 1958 to 1960 he studied at Texas Tech where he finished his studies started at Ohio State. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering with honors. His graduate work was done at the University of Southern California. He was promoted to Captain in January 1960 while on duty at Edwards Air Force Base, California. In November 1960 he went to Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, to attend Squadron Officer School and returned to Edwards as an experimental test pilot in the Fighter Projects Office. He was a member of the third group of fourteen astronauts named by NASA in October 1963. He was later chosen along with Elliot See for the prime crew slot of Gemini IX, with Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene A. Cernan serving as the backup crew. With the flight of Gemini IX coming up, both crews took off the morning of February 28, 1966, in their T-38 jet training planes headed for the McDonnell plant in St Louis. Here they would spend two weeks training in the simulator. The weather in St. Louis was rainy and foggy, and there was no visibility, as the jets of the two crews approached the St. Louis Municipal Airport. The jet that he and See were in was cleared to land first, using an instrument landing. See misjudged his landing approach, and in pulling up from the runway turned toward the McDonnell complex, 1000 feet from the landing strip. The T-38 hit the roof of the building where their spacecraft was being assembled, bounced into an adjacent courtyard, and exploded. Both astronauts were killed, and 14 persons on the ground were injured. Minutes later the Gemini IX backup crew, Stafford and Cernan, landed safely. As a result, the Gemini IX backup crew became the prime crew, (a NASA first), and all subsequent crew assignments were reshuffled. This ended up determining who would be the first man on the moon.
Description The Korean War; 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) began when North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of South Korea. China came to the aid of North Korea, and the Soviet Union gave some assistance.
Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as a result of an agreement with the United States, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south. By 1948, as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea was split into two regions, with separate governments. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Korea, and neither side accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—moved into the south on 25 June 1950. On that day, the United Nations Security Council recognized this North Korean act as invasion and called for an immediate ceasefire. On 27 June, the Security Council adopted S/RES/83: Complaint of aggression upon the Republic of Korea and decided the formation and dispatch of the UN Forces in Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing 88% of the UN's military personnel.
After the first two months of the conflict, South Korean forces were on the point of defeat, forced back to the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at Inchon, and cut off many of the North Korean troops. Those that escaped envelopment and capture were rapidly forced back north all the way to the border with China at the Yalu River, or into the mountainous interior. At this point, in October 1950, Chinese forces crossed the Yalu and entered the war. Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces which continued until mid-1951.
After these reversals of fortune, which saw Seoul change hands four times, the last two years of conflict became a war of attrition, with the front line close to the 38th parallel. The war in the air, however, was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign. Jet fighters confronted each other in air-to-air combat for the first time in history, and Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their communist allies.
The fighting ended on 27 July 1953, when an armistice was signed. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty has been signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war. Periodic clashes, many of which are deadly, have continued to the present.
