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I enjoyed sharing with the test pilots some of the lessons I learned during that time, most notably, a healthy respect for Russian built aircraft—a grudging admiration that I still maintain today. While it was commonplace for many Americans to deride the Soviets’ technology as grossly inferior to our own, I did not find that to be accurate. While their airplanes weren’t as fancy or elaborate as ours, they certainly got the job done. The same could be said of their spacecraft. Every time we have underestimated the Russians, they have surprised us.

Although the Korean War will never receive as much space in the history books as World War I or II, besides keeping the communists from overrunning South Korea, it served American interests in a manner that often goes unnoticed. Namely, most of America’s early astronauts were veterans of the Korean War, and the experience of aerial combat left indelible impressions on all of us. Gus Grissom flew one hundred combat missions in Korea; Wally Schirra flew ninety; Jim McDivitt flew 145 missions, some in F-80s and some in the Sabres similar to what I flew. John Glenn was a Marine pilot attached to our Air Force wing, and he shot down three MiGs. Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong served in Korea, too, as a Navy pilot aboard the aircraft carrier Essex. Neil flew seventy-eight combat missions and once had to eject when his wing caught a cable stretched over a bridge as a protective device. Fortunately, he was able to make it back to American-controlled territory before his plane went down.

For me, the experience as a fighter pilot was great training for my future role as an astronaut. Making quick decisions, many of which were life or death, as well as seeing the best way to rendezvous with friendly aircraft and to avoid the enemy, all played into my future studies at MIT, and my later contributions at NASA. For all of us, flying combat missions in Korea required concentration and skill far beyond anything we could have experienced otherwise. We had to face our fears and overcome them; we had to remain calm in the face of dangerous, high-altitude, high-speed situations. Our experience in Korea also immersed us in the competitive U.S.–Soviet conflict that would permeate the space race during the next several decades.

I returned home a hero—especially according to my father—with a renewed sense of patriotism and with confidence that I could do anything I put my mind to. So when the Air Force offered to pay for my graduate studies at MIT, I jumped at the opportunity. My mettle had been tested and found solid. My Air Force training and experiences would color everything I did for the rest of my life. Now that I had resumed my Air Force career as commandant of the test pilot school, it seemed I had come full circle, and my students never tired of hearing my fighter pilot combat stories.

EARLY IN MY tenure at Edwards, I learned that a trip to Europe for 1971 had been approved, and that I would be leading a group of our upper-class test pilot students, as well as instructors, to visit test flight schools in England and test centers in France, Italy, and Germany, to study how they ran their schools in comparison with ours. While we were gone, I left our school in the capable hands of my deputy officer, Ted Twinting. An accomplished test pilot himself, and well up to the job of keeping the program running without a hitch, Ted really set the tone for the place, whether I was there or not, and he did an excellent job. I had no qualms about leaving him in charge.

My only reticence about the trip was dealing with the media swarm that was sure to surround us. Although I had grown accustomed to being inundated by questions, blinded by camera flashes, and besieged with autograph seekers, my personality still did not gravitate naturally to such clamor. During the world tour, Neil, Mike, and I at least had some help in fending off the more aggressive members of the media. On this trip I’d be handling the press largely on my own.

We began our trip in Rome, where