Science: Heads Up

Wally Schirra acquired his interest in flying and sophisticated machinery by inheritance. His father, a retired engineer, now 68. was a bomber pilot in World War I who was shot down over the Western Front but managed to survive and fly again. He kept flying after the war, and for eight months was a barnstormer at county fairs. Sometimes when he stunted to impress the customers, his young wife Flo climbed out on the lower wing of his beat-up biplane.

Gung-Ho, Heads-Up. Wally was a wild boy. “I hated to open the front door,” his mother recalls, “and see the police chief again.” After attending public schools in Oradell and Englewood. N.J., Wally went briefly to Newark College of Engineering, and in 1942 got an appointment to Annapolis. He graduated in 1945. 215th in a class of 1,045. Just too late for World War II. In 1946 Wally Schirra married svelte, blonde Josephine Fraser, stepdaughter of Admiral James L. Holloway, who commanded in the Northeastern Atlantic and Mediterranean area during World War II and led the U.S. force that landed in Lebanon in 1958 (TIME cover, Aug. 4. 1958).

Schirra spent time on carriers and at naval shore bases. When the Korean war got going, he was assigned to an Arkansas National Guard squadron as an exchange pilot. His flying mates remember him as “a gung-ho, heads-up, by-the-book Annapolis man.” but they forgave him because he was such a good pilot. He flew 90 missions, mostly ground strafing and low-level bombing. His missions got him credit for 1½ MIGs, a Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air Medals. He also buzzed a U.S. camp, blew down lines of tents and was hotly reprimanded.

After Korea. Schirra went through the Navy’s test-pilot school and then was assigned to the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent. Md. For a flyer this was longhaired stuff, and fine for Schirra’s desire to emphasize the engineering side of aeronautics. His work was checking out the hottest new aircraft, and sometimes playing games with antiaircraft missiles. When he first heard about the Mercury man-in-space program, he put it out of his mind as visionary, but later realized that space flight is the logical next step in aviation, and went after a job as an astronaut.

In an Artillery Shell. During Schirra’s astronaut training, he built up a reputation as a dedicated, no-nonsense student of the just-born art of space flight. He has kept his sense of humor and some of his youthful mischievousness. but he never lets either affect his job. He hates heroics, and has avoided publicity stunts as much as possible. His last month TV outburst against making “show biz” out of the astronauts (TIME. Sept. 21) underlined a long and strongly held feeling.

Schirra’s wife and two children (Wally III. 12. and Suzanne. 5) have taken his shift to space in stride, followed last week’s flight almost as calmly as Schirra performed it. But Wally’s aviation-oriented parents are a bit dubious about their son’s new calling. “He’s not flying now,” says Walt Sr. “He’s just riding inside an artillery shell.”