In The Right Stuff, his celebrated 1979 book on test pilots and astronauts, author Tom Wolfe wrote about a pyramid of aviation skill. Those few at the very top have a combination of attributes. These include great capability at running an aircraft’s controls, mental toughness, and sense of daring and adventure. In short, these are people with the willingness and vision to push beyond the known boundaries in aircraft.
One man who stood on the pinnacle of that pyramid was the late Vice Admiral Don Engen. It was sad but appropriate that he died in a glider crash in July 1999 because he was doing what he truly loved—soaring with the winds for the sheer exhilaration of being in the sky.
At the age of 75 he died too young, because he was in a job, director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, that required another type of vision. He was developing plans for a spectacular new museum annex at Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C. Engen’s vision was fulfilled recently by his successor, retired Marine General Jack Dailey.
In December the Udvar-Hazy Center opened in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first successful powered flight. Thousands of visitors already have flocked to the museum and given it rave reviews. One part of the complex is an observation tower named in honor of Don Engen.
My first encounter with this remarkable man came about ten years ago when he showed up one day at the Naval Institute’s reference library. He asked to see some materials on aviation, but he made no show of being an admiral or asking for special treatment. In fact, it was only when he finally introduced himself that I realized he had previously been head of the Federal Aviation Administration. After that it did not take too many times of my addressing him as “Admiral” before he said, “Make it Don.”
Before long Engen consented to be the subject of an oral history. I enjoyed being the recipient of his tales, and, while listening to all he had been through, I marveled that he was still alive to tell them. As he described, he won his wings in 1943 at the age of 19; one of his cohorts was the slightly younger George H. W. Bush At 20 Engen was a dive-bomber pilot in the USS Lexington (CV-16), flagship of Vice Admiral Pete Mitscher. Mitscher habitually watched flight deck operations from a perch in the carrier’s island. During one takeoff, Engen saluted the admiral as a mark of respect on behalf of his fellow pilots. Mitscher returned the salute, because the respect was mutual.
On 25 October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Engen’s SB2C Hell- diver plunged out of the sky in a near- vertical dive on the Japanese Zuikaku. He put a bomb on the ship’s deck and contributed to her sinking. In addition to the material damage, there was symbolic value. She was the last survivor of the six aircraft carriers that had launched the 1941 strike on Pearl Harbor.
In succeeding years, Engen piled one achievement on another during his climb up the ever-narrowing pyramid. On 3 July 1950, when he was in a squadron on board the carrier Valley Forge (CV-45), Engen and his F9F-3 Panther took part in the first jet combat sortie in the Navy’s history. He later had a number of duties in the test pilot and development area. In 1953, for instance, he reported to the Empire Test Pilots’ School in England. It provided a lesson in the dangers involved in envelope-pushing. Of the 26 pilots in his class, more than half died in aircraft accidents then or later. Still later, when Engen was back on squadron duty in the United States, his wife Mary had the unhappy role of breaking the news to the wives of other pilots when their husbands were lost.
In 1959, Engen set out to break the world altitude record in those last days before astronauts penetrated into outer space. While flying a YF4H Phantom II, he exceeded the existing mark of 94,658 feet held by a Soviet pilot, but he did not get the necessary 3% increase to be considered the new record holder. He was not allowed to become an astronaut himself, because his 6-2 frame was too tall for the early space capsules.
In the 1960s, after leading a fighter squadron and carrier air group, he commanded the ammunition ship Mount Katmai (AE-16) during a deployment to Vietnam. In 1966-67 he was skipper of the aircraft carrier America (CVA-66) in the Mediterranean. One of the America’s pilots, Chuck Parish, married Engen’s daughter Candy. Parish was shot down in 1968 during a strike on Vietnam. A photo of Candy and her young son Hunter subsequently appeared on the cover of Look magazine as an example of the waiting families back home. Eventually she got word that Parish had been killed. She later married another naval officer, Bob Ellis.
In 1994, as a retired vice admiral, Don Engen had the pleasure of pinning his original aviator’s wings on his grandson, Hunter Ellis. Ellis flew the F/A-18 Hornet in the fleet several years and then left the Navy. He has recently shown up as the self-confident, knowledgeable host of the History Channel’s “Tactical to Practical” program.
In many ways, Don Engen’s legacy is alive and well.