Tex Johnston. He was a living legend.
You know who he had along as a passenger?
Unarguably the most famous of Tex Johnston's maneuvers, indeed one of the most well-known feats in all of aviation history, was executed at a demonstration flight at which over 200,000 spectators were present. Of the audience who was fortunate enough to see Tex's unprecedented and unauthorized Boeing 707 barrel roll, he comments, "The collective number of aircraft industry attendees was probably a first in aviation history and presented a historic opportunity to promote the Dash 80." In his typically matter-of-fact narrative style, he simply comments, "I pulled the nose up and executed a leisurely climbing left barrel roll, and then began the descent to Lake Washington." If you've ever heard this anecdote, you now know that it was accomplished by a Spartan graduate!During the certification program for the Boeing 707-120, Johnston enjoyed jogging the memory of Director Alcorn of the F.A.A., who flew in the copilot's seat while Tex flew the plane. It turned out that Alcorn had given a very young Johnston his pilot's license back in 1933 at Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa.
Common in the test pilot's career was the opportunity to meet famous personalities. When another of the planes that Tex helped test and promote, the KC-135, was being introduced, Arthur Godfrey was engaged to film a prime-time program to feature the aircraft. After numerous takes and the final wrapping of the project, Tex took Godfrey on a test flight, of which the pilot relates, "While inverted after several consecutive climbing barrel rolls, I felt a small tremor and glanced at the altimeter. We were at 31,000 feet. For years after, Art told the story of being on his back at 31,000 feet in a KC-135." Tex had a chance to meet up with Arthur Godfrey as part of major arrangements to deliver the first Boeing 707 to India. A tiger shoot was even slated to take place after the ceremonies, and Johnston enticed Godfrey with the invitation, "We shall reside in the fifty-five-room guest house and hunt from the back of the maharajah's elephants. How does that grab you?"
Having spent much time testing jets and offering recommendations for improvement, Tex naturally put a lot of effort into selling the aircraft to various airlines, domestic and international. This, along with helping to retrain crews who had flown a variety of mulitengine planes but were new to jets, made Tex Johnston's face, experience, and wisdom familiar fixtures in the transitional time his career spanned in the world of aviation.
Tex changed focus a bit as he left his job and accepted the position of assistant project manager for the Dyna Soar vehicle, a hypersonic plane for which Boeing had won the design contest. Once again Johnston met a significant name in the field, Wernher von Braun. Tex briefed von Braun on the Dyna Soar, and thus began a relationship rooted in mutual professional experience. The Dyna Soar program was scrapped due to estimates that its capability of collecting data was not cost effective.
Johnston had the opportunity to work on the Apollo lunar landing project when NASA named Boeing the contractor for production of part of the Saturn booster. Tex and his team represented Boeing in a professional a competent manner (after Johnston cracked the whip a bit to tighten up the leisure dress code and other matters he felt were not befitting one of the most advanced scientific projects to date) in working with NASA. The day before the historic July 16, 1969, blastoff, the Spartan grad was invited by Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to join them for dinner. He was happy for those who were chosen to actually make the flight, although those among us who have become familiar with Tex's sense of adventure have no doubts that he would have accompanied Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins in a heartbeat if given the chance.
As the reader can see from a short summary of this heroic test pilot's life, Alvin Merril Johnston was a professional above all else. Highly skilled and precise, yet always relying on his instinct to help lock in his understanding of a problem facing a particular aircraft or component, he took his young boy's dreams and used them to help hone his piloting abilities into a resource that the jet-age inventors depended upon. Just as strong as his confidence in his own abilities, is the amusing color in his personality; whether sharing a cockpit with a lion or riding a half-wild horse in the desert, Tex's enjoyment of life was evident on land or 30,000 feet in the air.