Aviation History: How did you become assigned to different research projects?

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Everest: In my case, I selected my own. Although I came out as an assistant, I shortly took over as chief test pilot. So I was doing all the assignments.

Aviation History: What kinds of aircraft were being tested at the time?

Everest: All the new jets were coming out; the Lockheed F-80s and T-33s, North American F-86s, Lockheed F-90s and F-94s; and with the new bombers you had the Boeing B-47 Stratojet. Then you had all the cargo airplanes and all types of different helicopters. During the six years that I spent at Edwards Air Force Base, I think I averaged flying about eight different airplanes per month. We also did bomb ballistic tests, rocket tests and gun tests. It was a very busy and exciting period.

Aviation History: How would the various phases of a test program be arranged upon the arrival of a new aircraft?

Everest: When a plane went into production, early copies were sent to the Edwards test center, and a bunch of the "using" agency command pilots were brought in. If it was a fighter, the user was the Tactical Air Command. If it was an interceptor, then that's Air Defense Command. We flew them as long and hard as we could to see what weaknesses they had, if any, and to try to help correct problems before the manufacturers produced too many of them. For example, the early North American F-100 Super Sabre had a problem with inertia coupling. If you were pulling high Gs with a high roll rate, the opposing forces on the airplane would overcome the stabilizing effect of wings and control surfaces, causing the pilot to lose control. We lost a lot of airplanes and pilots that way when aircraft tumbled out of control. We soon discovered that the F-100 did not have a large enough vertical tail fin surface. The manufacturer then redesigned it–built a larger vertical tail, which eliminated that particular problem. We continued with that approach with the new production airplanes. It worked out well for the Air Force.

Aviation History: One of the next generation of new research aircraft at the time was the Convair XF-92, which had a delta-wing design. Since this was one of the many research aircraft you tested, could you describe the XF- 92's flight characteristics and handling capabilities?

Everest: Unfortunately, the XF-92 was built for wind tunnel studies only. There was an argument among the engineers–some felt that it could never fly. So Convair, to make it fly, stuck an engine in it, and we started flying it. It wasn't a very stable airplane because they didn't attempt in those days to run stability tests on it, per se. Then Convair decided it wanted to get the XF-92 to go supersonic. Since it didn't have an afterburner on it, we dove it like you would an F-86 and other early jets to break the sound barrier. But we just couldn't get it to go supersonic. Convair then took it back to the factory and put an afterburner on it. We then were able to dive it supersonic. There was another argument that's still going on between the pilots and engineers. The engineers figured the XF-92 was going supersonic in level flight. But we pilots said it couldn't have, because we never saw any indication on the Mach meter or saw the airspeed indicator jump. Normally, you get a reading on your instruments when you go supersonic. One of the deficiencies of the XF-92 was that it had only one flight-control system–a single hydraulic flight-control system. One of the last flights made in that aircraft was by me. I took off from Rogers Dry Lake and shortly after the takeoff the master caution warning light came on. I looked down and saw I was losing the flight control system's hydraulic pressure. I then turned around to land on the lake bed, and the controls froze just as I touched down. We stopped flying that bird. We had done everything with it we had really wanted to, and felt there wasn't any sense in taking a chance on losing both pilot and plane in further testing.

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