Combat aircraft

W

ALKING INTO THE

US Air Force Test

Pilot School (TPS)

at Edwards AFB,

California, you are left

in no doubt as to the

esteemed company the building has

hosted. The walls are liberally decorated

with historic photographs and paintings,

not to mention the names of all the

students and commanding officers

over the past 70 years. None are better

known around the world than Brig Gen

Charles E. Yeager, the first man to break

the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.

Yeager is the only one of 42 commanding

officers to have completed the school

syllabus twice — in 1946 (class 46C) as

well as in 1951 (class 51A). In July 1962,

he returned here as the ‘boss’ to lead the

TPS for a further four years.

Other famous names intrinsically

linked with the school include Joe H.

Engle, who was the only pilot to fly into

space in two different winged aircraft

— the X-15 and the Space Shuttle. He

graduated from class 61C. Edwin E. ‘Buzz’

Aldrin is another astronaut who served

For more than 70 years, some of the most skilled aviators have

passed through the doors of the USAF Test Pilot School. Combat

Aircraft meets its current commanding officer, Col Charles Webb.

REPORT Frank Visser

Above: A Test Pilot

School-assigned

F-16D low and

fast in the R-2508

range complex

adjacent to

Edwards AFB.

Dan Stijovich

as commanding officer, from July 1971

until February 1972.

Founded in September 1944 as the

Flight Test Training Unit at Wright-

Patterson AFB in Ohio, the school still

operates under the same remit — to

train experimental test pilots, flight-test

engineers and flight-test navigators. In

February 1951, it moved to Edwards as

part of Air Research and Development

Command (ARDC) to make full use of

the perfect weather here, becoming

the ARDC Experimental Test Pilot

School. This only lasted a year as the

name was changed again to the USAF

Experimental Flight Test Pilot School.

Between 1962 and 1972 its role was

expanded to embrace ambitious young

aviators bound for astronaut training,

with some 37 TPS graduates being

selected for the US space program. This

88 March 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net

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