Tex Johnston: Jet-Age Test Pilot. - Review - book review

Aerospace Power Journal, Spring, 2001 by John H. Barnhill

Tex Johnston: Jet-Age Test Pilot by A. M. "Tex" Johnston with Charles Barton. Smithsonian Institution Press (http://www.si.edu/sipress), 470 L'Enfant Plaza, Room 7100, Washington, D.C. 20560, 2000, 284 pages, $17.95 (paper).

Tex Johnston (1914-98) was one of America's significant aviation pioneers, and he deservedly became a member of the National Aviation Hall of Fame. He grew up a classic all-American boy and experienced a pretty good rags-to-riches life, which included a paper route and saving to buy his first glider and his first motorcycle. But his passion was flying--that's where he ended up no matter how many detours he took or how high he rose. His first exposure to an airplane came as a kid of 11 when a barnstorming pilot offered a free ride to the locals, and he was the only one to take the offer. From that point he was committed, and he devoted his free time to the study of airplanes. Still, his route from Kansas to the hall of fame was circuitous and unusual in that it did not include military flying. His journey included training and employment as a mechanic, catch-as-catch-can flight instruction, and-finally--civilian flight school. He moved from barnstorming to the Apollo program without making a fatal mistake in an accident-prone profession. With a little bit of luck and a lot of skill (knowledge, training, and practice), this Kansas boy who wanted to be a test pilot eventually made it without fighting in either World War II or Korea. Over his career, he flew or tested just about every significant aircraft, from biplanes to the supersonic XP-59--the first American-made jet. As he rose through the ranks at Bell and Boeing, he played a key role in making planes faster and safer. Even when his job title put him behind a desk, he kept flying until his projects went into space.

Tex Johnston was one of the pioneers of military and commercial aviation. He made helicopters functional for oil exploration and made the Boeing 7--series planes safe and successful for passenger flight. As this memoir brings out, developing new machines entails lots of mistakes (and people do die), but Tex was always in control and able to explain why the others screwed up. From almost the beginning, he was the pilot who figured out where the other guys went wrong and adjusted the training and manuals accordingly. He knew his planes better than most, and he could get the designed performance out of them. He could, after all, double-barrel-roll a 707.

Much of the text is devoted to step-by-step description of the various moves in each of the planes--a pilot's pleasure but not of particular interest to the general reader. Further, the narrative sometimes reads as if it came directly from the operator's manual or the pilot's postflight report. The language and much of the material is surprisingly impersonal. Stilted prose and noticeable detachment from the subject are unusual in a work written with the help of an experienced writer. Still, the book holds the reader's interest. The hardcover version was originally published in 1991; this paper reissue is useful in bringing a particular era in aircraft development to a larger audience.