Neil Anderson was 19 and studying for the priesthood at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1953, when a Navy recruiter desperate enough to interview divinity students laid down a challenge.
"What do you do?" Anderson asked.
"I land on aircraft carriers," the officer told him.
"Is that hard to do?" Anderson wanted to know.
"Too hard for a wimp like you," the officer joked, intending his comment as a challenge. Anderson applied immediately for naval flight school and was accepted.
Before he turned 20 he was rolling down the runway at Pensacola on the first airplane flight of his life. "I knew instantly that this was where I belonged," he said.
Cadets graduating in the top 10 percent of their class could become Marines. "I was all over that," he recalls. After a six-year career flying Douglas AD-5 Skyraiders and Grumman F9F-6P and -8P photo aircraft for the Marine Corps, he switched to the Marine Corps Reserve and returned to college to become an aeronautical engineer. That led to jobs at Convair, designing Atlas missile silos, and at the Chrysler Corporation's Space Division as a rocket engineer on the Saturn 1B, predecessor to the Saturn V moon rocket.
Although he held ground-based jobs, he never left flying. As a reserve officer, he flew Grumman F9F Cougars, North American Furys, LTV F-8 Crusaders, and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms, eventually rising to lieutenant colonel and commander of an F-8 squadron.
In 1965 he wanted desperately to be an astronaut but, instead, got a job training astronauts for NASA. He led a three-man crew that conducted an eight-day test of an Apollo capsule in a vacuum chamber. Power to the chamber failed one night, causing a pressurization leak that could have been lethal to those in the capsule. Luckily, the power was restored after two minutes — along with the lights — and the three discovered they were all stuffing their right foot into the same pressure suit.
The next year, Convair (later to become General Dynamics) in Fort Worth, Texas, called to ask if Anderson would like to be an experimental test pilot on the F-111 fighter/bomber. That was more fun than flying a simulator, so he took the job. Anderson left the program early when General Dynamics sent him to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, an honor for a civilian.
Anderson and several other test pilots were assigned in 1973 to help to develop what became the F-16, a fighter that would meet a new strategy for the United States: overwhelm the Russians with large numbers of small, relatively inexpensive aircraft. He eventually became the chief test pilot.
His new position allowed him to tour the world, demonstrating the F-16. Many trips included a "swap flight," allowing Anderson to experience a wide variety of aircraft, including several Russian MiG fighters. Even while flying military jets, he kept a hand in fun flying, and he won the National Unlimited Championship at Reno in a Hawker Sea Fury in 1983. Highly modified, it was powered by an engine from a B-36 bomber.
He has kept his hand in civilian flying in other ways, too. He and five friends own three North American T-28B aircraft for aerobatic fun. Or rather, they own one flyable T-28, one nearly assembled from parts, and a third still a box of parts. He has a Cessna 401 for transporting his family, while a son, Chuck, owns a Beech Bonanza.
Among Anderson's memorable moments are a thunderstorm penetration on the wing of a careless flight leader that resulted in having to air-start a Cougar while flying partial-panel instruments, intercepting Russian Bear and Backfire bombers, and chasing flying mud hens while learning to fly a helicopter. He has been above 60,000 feet in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and an F-16, seen the mountain K2 from a MiG-19, and joined up with birds in a sailplane. He has flown 251 types of aircraft, but — at age 62 — his goal of achieving 400 seems in jeopardy. However, he is hopeful.
While not considered highlights, he has crashed three times. His air racer crashed in one incident; in another he was forced to land an F-16 gear up, smacking his head into the world's hardest canopy. In the third incident, a formation leader in a Skyraider experienced an engine problem while flying less than 200 feet agl and began to descend, causing another aircraft to swerve toward Anderson. Anderson had nowhere to go except into "quite a few" trees; but he limped home, his aircraft damaged and shuddering.
Pretty good for a wimp.
