Later, after flying in the Navy for four or five years, spending some time on an aircraft carrier, I applied to and was accepted in a program where I went to graduate school first and then to the Naval Test Pilots School.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
After the United States entered the war, I joined the Naval Reserve and spent ninety days in a Columbia University dormitory learning to be a naval officer.
After the navy, I transferred to Harvard and finished there. I was there the spring term of 1951 and I stayed through the summer term and a whole other year, so I was able to do two years in a little less than a year and a half.
I was a naval officer and aviator. I tested airplanes and got selected to be an astronaut later on.
When I was 17, I was told I had the choice of enlisting in the Navy or going to jail, so I spent the next three years in the Navy.
I spent one semester in Air Force ROTC, as I wanted to be a pilot.
My whole life, I wanted to be a fighter pilot; it's what I wanted to do. I set up all of my classes for it, but I got lazy my senior year in high school and didn't get my paperwork in.
And then, when I went into the Navy, there was no choice. You took about half of the hours during your naval training as naval courses and the other half were engineering.
Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.
I was put in the Air Corps. I was never educated to serve in the military, but soon my activities in the American Air Corps became very interesting to me.
I flew fighters for the Navy in San Diego for three years, went and did my post-graduate education, and then I was a test pilot in Patuxent River, Maryland, for a few years. I was back in the fleet in the Navy when I was selected to come back here to NASA to become an astronaut.