Orange County Review
, Orange, Virginia Thursday December 2, 1999Top Gun
By Al Martin III, Review Staff Writer
Photos courtesy of Chuck Myers
PIC
Myers In his pressure suit In front of an F-106; preparing for test flight; receiving his wings as a bomber-commander In World War II;
PIC
Myers, top right, with the first crew he flew with in the Pacific Theatre in WW II;
PIC
Navy Test Pilot School #12 (John Glenn, [one of] the first human[s] to orbit earth is just to the lower right of Myers);
PIC
Aircraft commander Myers Is ready for a flight;
PIC
Lead test pilot Myers sits In his F-106.
General Douglas MacArthur made good his "I shall return" pledge to the Philippine people in World War II, Chuck Myers was there.
When the first military jets flew at speeds, Myers was there.
When the U.S. Navy needed experienced combat pilots during the Korean War, Myers was there, too.
For nearly 60 years, Orange County's Myers has not only been at the forefront of the aviation field, he has flown the planes leading it. Two weeks ago Myers' contributions to the field of aviation garnered him induction into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame.
Part of the military support for MacArthur's return was provided by a 19-year old [medium] bomber pilot from Virginia, 2nd Lt. Charles. E. "Chuck" Myers, Jr.
More than 50 years later, Myers' World War II heroics are just a part of the reasons he was selected as one of two 99 inductees into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame.
Myers owns the "Flying M" Stock Farm in the Madison Run area of Orange County. Myers life before he purchased his farm in 1967 was anything but ordinary, nor has it been ordinary since.
Myers was born in Hampton in 1925. His father was stationed at Langley Field, which is now Langley Air Force Base. It is fitting that both Myers and this time country's space program were born in the same location.
His life spans the distance from early "flying machines" through experimental rocket engine planes, to the beginning of modern jet military aircraft, to the stealth aircraft of this era that will be the stalwarts into the next century.
"My earliest memories are of planes that were held together by wire and cloth and glue," Myers remembers.
However, his later memories are of being the world's fastest man, flying a supersonic jet aircraft or for being the man with more flying time at more than Mach 2 (over 1200 miles-per-hour) than any other man on earth. "I was the lead test pilot on the F-106," Myers said.
"I did the envelope expansion tests that allowed an Air Force pilot to set a new speed record." According to Myers, the speed record Maj. Joe Rogers set was Mach 2.42 or 1,544 mph. flying at 40,000 feet. But, in his tests of the aircraft, Myers flew it to 84,000 feet.
That is more than 16 miles above the earth.
The old saying around the test center at Edwards Air Force Base, Ca. was that "If you are flying that high and that fast, you'd better be headed home."
"There was a corridor of supersonic flight back to Edwards. I flew the corridor and was able to see San Francisco on one side of the plane and San Diego on the other side," Myers said.
But, it all started when he was 19 years old.
Afraid he would miss out on helping to win World War 2, Myers turned down a football scholarship to enter the Army Air Corp. He was in the Pacific Theater within months, gaining on-the-job training to become a commander of a B-25 [Mitchell medium] bomber. Still a teenager, Myers became the commander of a B-25 assigned to the 498th Bombardment Squadron, the Falcon Squadron the Air Apaches.
Possibly the youngest aircraft commander in the war, Myers had a crew of five men on his plane. But, instead of dropping bombs, he flew a B-25 that had a dozen .50 caliber [heavy] machine guns and the crew made its living strafing Japanese targets at very low altitude.
"When you blasted all 12 guns," Myers said, "you could almost feel the plane stop in mid-air." It was these strafing missions that supported the MacArthur return to the Philippines. The squadron sank three Japanese ships in one day using this technique.
After the war, Myers returned to college and he received an engineering degree from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. He kept his flying status by remaining a member of the Air Corp reserves during his college years. But he was "bored with the idea of becoming a working engineer," so he transferred to the U.S. Navy.
After being commissioned an ensign, Myers found himself back in flight - school, this time with the Navy gold flying wings and was stationed off the coast of Korea aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard, seeing combat duty in his second war. Again, his missions were mostly strafing.
"The F9F-2 was no competition for the MIG-15s the communists had," Myers noted. "So we stayed away from them if we could." Upon his return from war, Myers was selected to be a Navy test pilot.
Myers graduated from test pilot school class #12 along with two other aviation, and later, political luminaries, astronaut and then Senator John Glenn and James Stockdale was destined to be the highest-ranking Vietnam War POW and was Ross Perot's vice-presidential running mate in 1992.
John Glenn went on to become [one of] the first human [s] to orbit the earth.
"Glenn got into the astronaut program by the skin of his teeth," Myers said. "His age almost kept him out, the same thing that kept Chuck Yeager out." Assigned to the Navy's special weapons test facility at Kirkland A.F.B. in New Mexico, Myers tested all of the Navy's arsenal of attack aircraft.
He worked on the development of "over-the-shoulder" bombing techniques. This consisted of flying the plane very close to the ground to within close range of the target, taking the plane into a steep climb, "lobbing" the bomb onto the target and continuing the loop-over, with a 360-degree roll included, and a quick escape from the target area. "By the way this worked, the pilot was less likely to encounter anti-aircraft fire," Myers said. "And if it worked right, he was safely, away before the bomb went off."
He also assisted in the development tables for nuclear bomb delivery for all the different Navy planes.
At this point in his career, Myers, who was married and the father of two daughters, decided to give up the military and enter the private sector of the aviation industry. In San Diego, Ca., Myers joined the Convair Company as the test pilot of the "flying pogo stick" a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. The plane never reached the point of full production because of incurable mechanical deficiencies.
"The VTOL was later brought into the military as the British Harrier," Myers said. "But I was against the Harrier and that's another story altogether." Soon after, Myers helped launch the Experimental Test Pilot's Association to provide a network for the approximately 60 civilian test pilots actively engaged in the testing of experimental aircraft. "The association was mainly as way of networking with other test pilots to make our business safer," Myers said. "We were losing a lot of pilots in crashes then." According to Myers, the association is still mainly an educational and information exchange entity for test pilots. "However, we started a trust fund early on to pay for the educations of the survivors of test pilots who were killed on the job," Myers added.
Following the years as a test pilot, Myers and his family moved back to Virginia.
Settling in Arlington, Myers established his aviation consulting business, AeroCounsel, Inc., a business which continues to operate today.
However, he continues to be on the cutting edge of aviation.
"When I was a kid, 'I used to listen to the radio show, The Shadow," Myers recalls. "I thought, 'Wow! Wouldn't it be great to be invisible like the Shadow?"
This idea stuck with Myers. It developed after he watched two military jets participating in the Top Gun competition. According to Myers, prior to the actual practice dog fights, the aircraft fly parallel for some distance and make sharp turns to start the engagement.
"Inevitably, a pilot of one plane would call the other and ask him to wag his wigs," Myers said. "The first pilot simply could not see the other plane and had to in order to engage."
When Myers took the job as the Director of Air Warfare in the office of the Secretary of Defense, he walked into the Pentagon, carrying with him the Idea that would evolve into the stealth aircraft program, a program that was so successful the start up, the first stealth aircraft were flying within three years.
"I had to be pretty persistent in promoting the stealth idea," Myers said. "Some people called it a "chimerical' idea, meaning foolishness or an impossible idea."
He envisioned an aircraft that had no visual, acoustical, radar, infrared or electronic "signatures." He named it "Project Harvey" in honor of the invisible rabbit from the play of the same name.
Myers persistently promoted the idea until he formally won the approval of the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. David Jones.
From there the project took off and Lockheed Aircraft was "bending metal" for the initial aircraft at their famous "Skonk Works" factory within three years of Myers entering the Pentagon.
As they say, the rest is history. So far, the stealth program has put two aircraft, the F-117 fighter, and the B-2 bomber into the Air Force arsenal.
"I still think the stealth is a craft good idea, I just wish we had done it right. Vision is one of the signatures and since you can still see them, one of the signatures is still there and the plane is not invisible" Myers explained.
Myers still sees the need for a smaller stealth fighter that is virtually invisible to the naked eye.
"Maybe they'll get it right the next time," Myers concludes.
Since the late 1980s, Myers has continued to operate his consulting business In Arlington, splitting his time between "the city" and the farm. At 74-years old, Myers is not slowing down, not at all.
The house at the farm is an underground dwelling. The idea of an underground house was taken from a concept of vertical take-off and landing aircraft he worked on while at Convair.
The cluster of aircraft would be stored underground, out of harm's way of most atmospheric contaminates. So is his house.
The one thing he misses right now is having his own plane to fly. He recently sold his GPS Skybolt.
"I'm not flying right now," Myers said. "I need some time to play, though." The main thing he needs in an airplane is the ability to do aerobatics, Myers said.
"When I get another plane, it will be to do aerobatics," Myers laughed, "because it impresses my grandchildren." Anything else would probably be too boring.
Even at 75, Myers continues to push the' envelope. However, he is no where near ready to seal it.
PIC
Photos courtesy of Chuck Myers
The Flying Pogo Stick, left, was Myers' first assigned aircraft as a Convair Company test pilot.
PIC
Above, Myers is inducted into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame, Nov. 20.