NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript

Neil A. Armstrong
Interviewed by Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose and Dr. Douglas Brinkley
Houston, TX – 19 September 2001

[This oral history with Neil Armstrong was conducted on September 19, 2001, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. Interviewers were Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose and Dr. Douglas Brinkley. Assisting with the session were team members of the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project.]

Brinkley: I wanted to start a little bit about growing up in Ohio. Ohio is an aviation state. I read somewhere that when you were very young, your father took you to the National Air Races in Cleveland. You were so young, do you have any recollection?

Armstrong: I was two the first time I went to the Air Races. Of course I have no recollection of that now.

Brinkley: Did your father have an interest in flight? Is that why he would take you there, or was it just in the air at that time, it was so exciting?

Armstrong: I don't think he had a particular interest in flight, but just an opportunity to take children to new experiences, I guess.

Brinkley: You got to ride in your first plane when you were age six, in one of the Ford Tri-Motors. Do you have recollections of that?

Armstrong: I do not.

Brinkley: You don't?

Armstrong: No.

Ambrose: When did you first hear of [Charles A.] Lindbergh?

Armstrong: I can't remember when the first time was, but I'm sure it was when I was a schoolboy, in elementary school.

Ambrose: Everybody in America knew.

Armstrong: Yes. Schoolboys always talked about heroes of flight.

Brinkley: Did you later have an opportunity to meet Lindbergh? Was he somebody that had been in your mind when you were becoming a pilot, thinking about Lindbergh? Did he mean a great deal to you as an American icon?

Armstrong: I did have the opportunity to meet him on several occasions. Had enormous admiration for him as a pilot. I'd read some of his books. I was aware of the controversial position he took on certain issues. But I was very pleased to have had the chance to meet him, and I think his wife [Anne Morrow Lindbergh] was a wonderful person and quite an [eloquent] writer.

Ambrose: Yes.

Brinkley: Did you ever correspond with him at the time of the Apollo? Was there any kind of wishing you well before the Apollo 11 mission, wishing you luck sort of—

Armstrong: I can't recall that. I think I have some letters from him in my file, though.

Ambrose: When did you begin building things? Your interest and your concern with engineering, your wanting to build things, is that a part of your memory from when you were five or six years old? Did you have a special bent towards that?

Armstrong: I began to focus on aviation probably at age eight or nine, and inspired by what I'd read and seen about aviation and building model aircraft, why, I determined at an early age—and I don't know exactly what age, while I was still in elementary school—that that was the field I wanted to go into, although my intention was to be—or hope was to be an aircraft designer. I later went into piloting because I thought a good designer ought to know the operational aspects of an airplane.

Ambrose: Were you good in mathematics?

Armstrong: Everything's relative. I was good in my small classes. However, I've since met many people who have far better mastery of mathematics than I will ever have.

Ambrose: Did you have physics in high school?

Armstrong: Yes, I did.

Ambrose: Do you remember your teacher?

Armstrong: Yes, it was John Crites. I remember him very well, because he was sort of an unconventional teacher. He allowed a few students in each of his classes to do special projects, and so we didn't go to class very much. We were always off working on our projects.

Ambrose: What was your project?

Armstrong: In physics we had two. One was building a Tesla coil. I think it was probably about a 50,000 volt Tesla coil, good enough to light up fluorescent bulbs in the next room. Then a wind tunnel. That project was by myself. The Tesla coil I did with another student.

Ambrose: Tell us about the wind tunnel.

Armstrong: Well, my knowledge of aerodynamics was not good enough to match the quality of the Wright Brothers' tunnel, and at that point I suppose I was equally educated to them. But it was a fun project. Blew out a lot of fuses in my home. [Chuckles] Because I tried to build a rheostat which would allow the electric motor to change speed and then get various air flows through the tunnel, not altogether successfully.

Brinkley: During this period you were traveling around Ohio to a lot of different cities. Is there one beyond Wapakoneta, other cities that you really identified with? Did you go to different schools in all those different towns?

Armstrong: Yes. I went to … half a dozen schools.

Brinkley: Were you able to develop friendships when you were going to that many different schools, or was it the family life become—?

Armstrong: I'm certain I had friendships in every one of the schools I was in, but I don't remember those friends prior to probably the junior high school age. I still have friends that I see and remember from that time period and subsequent.

Ambrose: Beyond your physics class and the projects, were you an avid reader? Were you reading engineering and aerodynamics or history or what?

Armstrong: I was an avid reader, yes, and I read all kinds of things. I spent a lot of time in the library and took a lot of books out of the library, both fiction and nonfiction. However, when I was building things, like models and so on, they were predominantly focused on aviation-related “stuff.”

Ambrose: Do you remember any specific book you read about aviation that—"Wow!" kind of response?

Armstrong: I recall that I read a lot of the aviation magazines of the time, Flight and Air Trails and Model Airplane News, and anything I could get my hands on.

Brinkley: What about like Robert [H.] Goddard in science fiction, things about space? Did you ever read any of the science fiction writers of that time?

Armstrong: As a young boy I don't recall reading much science fiction. I did come to enjoy it when I was perhaps late high school and college age.

Ambrose: When you were very small, did you have any interest in [General William] Billy Mitchell's trial?

Armstrong: I don't recall. I knew the name Billy Mitchell and I knew about his demonstration of the effectiveness of air power, but I don't recall things about his trial. I may have known, but I don't remember.

Ambrose: You were what, a sophomore in high school when World War II ended?

Armstrong: That's approximately—let's see. Yes, I was between my sophomore and junior year.

Ambrose: The assumption among young men at that time was, "As soon as I graduate or as soon as I get to be eighteen, I'm going into the service." But then the war ended when you were fifteen. So you completed the high school without any "I'm going to enlist" kind of feeling.

Armstrong: That's correct. We had a few people in my school who had either lied about their age or were a little older than the class, who had gone into the service, and came back and finished high school after the war was over. We had several of those fellows in our school, but the youngest of those would probably be two years older than I was.

Ambrose: You got a Navy scholarship to Purdue [University, West Lafayette, Indiana] immediately after graduating high school, I gather.

Armstrong: I believe that the test for what was called the Hollaway Plan, the Naval Aviation College [Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, NROTC] Program, were administered nationwide while I was still in high school, probably shortly before graduation, although I cannot remember the precise date. It was early enough so that we could pick a school. If we were accepted into this program, we could pick any accredited school in the nation to attend.

Ambrose: Was the test on one of those IBM [International Business Machines] sheets where you, you know, one, two, three, four, five, and you have a lead pencil and you—

Armstrong: I don't think so. I believe it was predominantly—I shouldn't really say, because I confuse that. But my recollection is that it was a pencil-and-paper exam with a variety of different kinds of questions and sections.

Ambrose: Mainly mathematics or mathematics and physics?

Armstrong: I'm sure they had a focus on things that would be appropriate to aviation, because it was an aviation-directed program, but I can't remember the details of the test, except that I recall it was quite long. [Laughter]

Ambrose: What do you mean by long? All day?

Armstrong: Yes, it was an all-day test.

Ambrose: That's the way they used to do it, I know. [Laughter] I've been through that myself.
So you came out well, obviously, and the Navy offered you, and the "Holly" Plan—it was like Naval ROTC, that you would get tuition and a stipend of twenty-five bucks a month or something like that, I suppose.

Armstrong: Fortunately, it was a little more than that. They would pay tuition fees and books, plus a stipend for board and room.

Ambrose: So when you were accepted in this program, you were signing up, in effect, accepting a call from the navy.

Armstrong: A seven-year program, yes. Two years of [university study], then go to the navy, go through flight training, get a commission, and then serve in the regular navy for a total then of three years of active duty, after which the plan would be to return to university and finish the last two years. The intent of this program, named after Admiral [James L.] Holloway [Jr.], who, if memory serves, was [astronaut Walter M.] Wally Schirra's father-in-law, and the intent was to build up the naval air reserve strength, which they felt was going downhill because people after the war really didn't want to do that stuff anymore. That was my understanding at the time.

Ambrose: So you were called up for flight training after what, one year at Purdue or two years?

Armstrong: A year and a half. It was supposed to be two years, but I suppose they saw [the] Korea[n War] coming or something, and they needed to ratchet the volume up a little bit, so they called us in early.

Ambrose: So now you're in uniform, but not yet commissioned, being trained as a pilot, is that correct?

Armstrong: Yes, I was in naval flight school.

Ambrose: Tell me about training. How did the navy go about training you?

Armstrong: Well, they found that the way I had learned to fly before wasn't nearly what they expected. [Laughter]

Brinkley: Just to backtrack for one second, you got your pilot's license at age sixteen in Ohio. Could you have gotten it any earlier? Is that almost like getting an auto license back when you're fourteen, fifteen?

Armstrong: I believe you could get it in a glider at age fourteen, but in a powered aircraft you had to wait till you reached your sixteenth birthday, and then the license you got was called a student pilot's license, which allowed you to fly solo, but not take passengers with you.

Brinkley: Do you remember your first solo flight over the land in Ohio when you actually could be up in the air on your own? Do you have any recollections of that?

Armstrong: Yes, I have vague recollections. A very exciting time when you go on your first solo.

Brinkley: Where was the location?

Armstrong: It was in Wapakoneta, at a grass field there.

Ambrose: Who was your first instructor?

Armstrong: Oh, let's see. I had three. The first one's name escapes me at the minute [Frank Lucie]. The second one was named Aubrey Knudegard. The third was Chuck Finkenbine .

Brinkley: They lived in that area, in Wapakoneta area?

Armstrong: I don't know where they lived, but I'm sure they didn't live far away.

Brinkley: Was this unusual for a young man your age? Were a lot of contemporaries of yours wanting to get pilot's license?

Armstrong: I was in a class of maybe about seventy students, about half boys. We had three in my class that learned to fly at the same time I did. So I don't know how unusual that is, three out of thirty five, 10 percent. Not very unusual.

Brinkley: Before we get back to the navy, can I ask one Ohio question? I'm curious because of living in Ohio. Do you remember the towns that you lived in? Research says you lived in a lot of different towns, but they never say the names of them.

Armstrong: I moved a lot before I entered school, and when I entered school, the rate of change of towns slowed down somewhat, but still about every couple of years it seemed like we were moving.

Brinkley: What were the names of some of the other towns besides—

Armstrong: First school was in Warren, Ohio; and then Jefferson, Ohio; Moulton, Ohio; then St. Mary's, Ohio; [Upper Sandusky Ohio]; then Wapakoneta, Ohio.

Brinkley: I never knew those other towns. Thank you.

Ambrose: Okay. When you began with the navy is training you to be a pilot, you had been up in a single-engine plane for some soloing, but now you're with the United States Navy. How did they train you?

Armstrong: Training was divided into three parts. The first was a [four]-month nonflying ground school and physical training regimen. The second part was called basic training, which was all flight students went through the exact same protocol, did the exact same kinds of things, learning to fly, getting some experience soloing, learning to do cross-country flight, navigation, that sort of thing, learning to fly instruments, learning to fly acrobatics, learning to fly formation, learning to drop bombs, learning to fire guns, and learning to land on an aircraft carrier.
After that, went to advanced training, where—

Ambrose: On an actual carrier?

Armstrong: On a real carrier. [In] advanced training, you [were selected to become the pilot of single engine aircraft (fighters and attack aircraft) or multiengine patrol aircraft]. In my case, I asked for fighters and got fighters.
Then we went to Corpus Christi, Texas, and went through training there in single-occupant aircraft, in my case F8F Bearcat. We went through … the same kinds of things, learning to fly on instruments and learning to do advanced navigation, over-water navigation.

Ambrose: Navigation by the stars or navigation by radio or navigation by compass or what?

Armstrong: We had learned in the earlier part, … the ground school part, how