Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

I graduated on a hot, steamy day in July of 1954 with a commission in the Air Force Reserve. Present were my mother and one of my sisters, Louise, as well as my Uncle Albert, who had helped us through some difficult years and was always there when I needed him. The entire family had pooled resources and bought me a green 1954 Plymouth coupé as a graduation present. It was a wonderful surprise—I had planned on saving my money to buy a car before I entered Air Force flight training. There was one problem: I could fly airplanes but had not yet driven a car!

The fifty-two members of my class consisted of Korean War veterans getting their schooling on the GI Bill, six Israelis, and thirty-eight rookies like myself. I was one month short of my twenty-first birthday and the gold bars on my shoulders were more meaningful to me than my college diploma.

While waiting for a training slot, I applied to McDonnell Aircraft Company in St. Louis and was grateful for the chance to continue my transition from student to pilot. Graduates entering the aircraft industry in the 1950s were generally given options to work in drafting or reading and plotting the data records from flight tests. I chose the latter because it was attached to the flight test department, which was where I wanted to be. The roar of jet engines, the smell of jet fuel, and the constant rumble of the factory permeated the buildings. It was an exciting, busy place filled with high-energy people.

As I walked through the office maze on my first day, I heard a gruff voice ask, “Are you Kranz?” I stopped and the voice continued, “Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.” I turned to face a balding cherub, with a red nose and forehead, as if he had just emerged from a sauna. He looked like one of Santa’s helpers. He was my height, but he leaned forward, neck bent in a questioning attitude. He had clear, piercing eyes under shaggy brows. I noted his bow tie and suspenders as he said, “Hi, I’m Harry Carroll. Follow me. I’m your new boss.”

He moved out quickly and I followed him to a desk covered with rolls of paper. He shoved them against the wall, pushed me into the chair, and said, “When you reduce these rolls of oscillograph readouts and learn to read the data, you will know more about what happened during a flight test than the pilot, the engineer, and the designer. These rolls of paper are like novels. It is up to you to get the meaning, then sense the plot and determine whether flight objectives were satisfied. You must watch to see if we are getting too close to the flight limits.” Then he stepped back, chuckled, and said, “This is the best job in flight test! Get started.”

His enthusiasm was my enthusiasm; his passion for work was my passion. I had to learn from others that he had flown eighty-six combat missions over Italy and Germany in the B-17 Flying Fortress and over Japan in the B-29 Superfortress. He had many inventions related to data reduction and aviation safety. He was also a poet, actor, and scoutmaster and he led the rugged and difficult grand portage canoe trips across northern Minnesota to Lake Superior. After retirement, he served as a deckhand for barefoot cruises in the Caribbean, and became the oldest individual to complete the Outward Bound mountain survival program.

Each day there was a new discovery under his guidance. No work was insignificant, no job unimportant. The standards had to be the highest if you were to meet with his approval. Harry Carroll was the first in a string of mentors who changed my life.

By the end of my third month on the job, I was sitting with the test pilots and flight test engineers during debriefings, reviewing flight cards (a pilot’s checklist for the test sequences), transcribing pilot’s notes, and validating flight test objectives. Heady stuff for a recent college graduate and the next best thing to being in the cockpit. This experience would serve me well later when I sat with the backroom guys and reviewed data on our space missions. At a glance I learned to identify the essentials and put the story together.

The months passed rapidly, and then it was time to pack up and report to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for preflight training. As of March 1955, I was now on active duty and assigned to pilot class 56M.

Other than St. Louis, I had never been west of the Mississippi River, and I soaked in the scenery as I drove through western Missouri and down into Oklahoma. My vision of Texas was crushed when I crossed the Red River. I had been expecting the sandy desert, cactus, and rattlesnakes of the movies, but I saw rolling hills starting to green up. I was sure that would change as I neared San Antonio.

I was wrong. This wasn’t the lonesome prairie, the Texas of parched land and skeletal oil rigs. A scenic river wound its way through San Antonio, and the blend of Mexican and western culture gave the city a gentle and festive character. I was a willing believer in Texas charm and hospitality as I drove through the gates of Lackland Air Force Base. There I would have twelve weeks of preflight training, a good part of which taught you confidence by putting you through some pretty physically demanding exercises out in the boonies. I also learned the essence of leadership through being given responsibility for raw recruits who were wearing a uniform for the first time and were badly in need of understanding why the military demands order in everything from the state of your locker to the crispness of a salute, instant compliance with commands, and other basic military cultural imperatives. As the song puts it, “by your pupils you’ll be taught.” It would take some twelve weeks for them to transform me from college student to officer, one hell of a speedy transition. It was the NCOs (noncommissioned officers) who taught me the basics—and my respect for the sergeants on the line grew with every passing year.

My travels in the Air Force next took me to Spence Air Base in Moultrie, Georgia, where Jack Coleman, my primary flight instructor, opened the world of flight for me and taught me much more. In the hot steamy air over southern Georgia he tested my skills, but in the briefing rooms and on the ramp he taught teamwork and the belief that “There is no such thing as good enough. You, your team, and your equipment must be the best. That is how you will win victories.” The day he turned me loose to solo, he taught me that the teacher’s role is to instill the confidence to fly at the edge of peak performance. Your primary flight instructor is the man you never forget. Coleman’s lessons helped me in my years at Mission Control. I could empathize with what the controllers felt during the brutally demanding debriefings after a mission and tactfully handle the one-on-one critiques after a simulation. He taught me, by example, how to train my controllers, build their confidence, and turn them loose when they were ready. Coleman also gave me an appreciation of the fundamental importance of teamwork and mutual trust among team members.

Of course, some lessons can only be experienced, not taught. One of these is dealing with fear, which comes to every pilot, like a bolt from the blue. Fliers and fighters alike have referred to this as looking into the eye of the tiger. I looked into mine one night on my first solo cross-country flight, over the blackness of Georgia’s Okefenokee swampland.

I had turned to a new course over the town of Alma and looked down to change my radio frequency. Moments later, when I raised my eyes, the lights of the town seemed to fill the cockpit like tiny diamonds. For a few seconds I was mesmerized, then confused, as the sound of my engine and my rapidly accelerating aircraft snapped me out of my reverie.

In whatever part of my brain was still working, I put it together: I had rolled upside down over the city and was diving, inverted, toward the heart of Alma. I rolled visually away from the lights, into total darkness, all sounds diminishing as I approached a stall. Fighting vertigo, I recovered and flew on instruments, not trusting my senses, all the way back to base.