Story behind the delta-wing jet outside the Armstrong Air and Space Museum
Outside the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta stands an orange, delta-wing jet. The Douglas F5D Skylancer is a relic of a project that might have had Neil Armstrong flying winged spaceplanes into orbit years before Apollo.
In the late 1950s, the Air Force set its sights on a rocket-boosted spaceplane for global reconnaissance and bombing missions. It evolved into a joint Air ForceNASA research program dubbed Dyna-Soar (for “Dynamic Soaring”). The agencies named seven test pilots as program consultants, including Armstrong.
Dyna Soar would use a huge Titan III rocket to loft the X-20 — a fighter-sized spaceplane with steeply swept, delta wings. One of many challenges was how to escape if the launch went wrong — a danger illustrated years later by the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
NASA had obtained the F5D for research programs at its Dryden Flight Research Center on Rogers Dry Lake in California. Armstrong saw it could mimic the similarly-shaped X-20 to test escape maneuvers.
Here’s how NASA reports described a typical test: Armstrong would race the Skylancer at nearly 600 miles per hour just 200 feet above the desert floor, then pull straight up like a rocket
heading for space. At about 7,000 feet, he would pull the plane onto its back, peeling away from the imaginary rocket, then roll upright and glide to a landing on a section of lakebed marked like an X-20 runway.
Armstrong never flew the X-20. The Pentagon canceled the project in December 1963 before the first one was built. But by then, NASA had reassigned Armstrong to fly the more utilitarian space capsules — first Gemini into orbit, and then Apollo to the moon.
Every Monday, the Dayton Daily News celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program. To learn about Apollo-related events and exhibits around Ohio, visit apollo-moon.com.