Born to Fly
Born on August 5, 1930 on his grandparents’ farm in Auglaize County, Ohio, Neil Armstrong was the eldest of three children of Stephen and Viola Engel Armstrong. His family moved several times before they settled in Wapakoneta when Neil was 13. Neil fell in love with airplanes at the age of 6 when he took his first flight, in a Ford Tri-Motor “Tin Goose.” He worked at numerous jobs around town and at the nearby airport so he could start taking flying lessons at the age of 15 and on his 16th birthday he was issued a pilot's license. He hadn't even received his automobile license yet.Always fascinated by planes and flying, Armstrong built a small wind tunnel in the basement of his home where he performed experiments on model planes he built.
After he graduated from Blume High School in 1947, Neil entered Purdue University with a US Navy scholarship. He began work on an aeronautical engineering degree, but in 1949, he was called to active duty with the Navy. He won his jet wings at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida at the age of 20, the youngest pilot in his squadron. He was sent to Korea in 1950 and flew 78 combat missions in Navy Panther jets winning three Air Medals. Before the war was over, Armstrong returned to Purdue to complete his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955.
A New Adventure
Armstrong joined NACA, (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), NASA's predecessor, as a research pilot at the Lewis Laboratory in Cleveland and later transferred to the NACA High Speed Flight Station at Edwards AFB, California. He was a project pilot on many pioneering high speed aircraft, including the 4,000 mph X-15. As a test pilot, Neil Armstrong made 7 flights in the X-15 aircraft. He was able to attain an altitude of 63,198 meters (207,500 feet).In 1962, Armstrong was transferred to astronaut status. He served as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, launched March 16, 1966, and along with David Scott, performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space by mating his Gemini 8 with an uninhabited Agena rocket.
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