Presentation Date: March 23, 2000
George E. Cooper USAAF
ETO P-47 Fighter Pilot, Research & Test Pilot. George Cooper had a long and interesting flying career. During WW II, he shot down 4 German planes. After leaving the Army he became a test pilot at NACA, later NASA, at Moffett, CA testing a variety of cutting edge theories & procedures. Currently, George owns & runs a vineyard in the Silicone Valley. ETO P-47 Fighter Pilot, Research & Test Pilot. George Cooper had a long and interesting flying career. During WW II, he shot down 4 German planes. After leaving the Army he became a test pilot at NACA, later NASA, at Moffett, CA testing a variety of cutting edge theories & procedures. Currently, George owns & runs a vineyard in the Silicone Valley.
George E. Cooper dazzled our Golden Gate Wing on March 23rd with his humble, modest style, sharing some highlights of his fabulous aviation experiences & contributions. He had just returned on a long flight from Germany within the previous 20 hours, but this nearly 84 year-old dynamo still kept his promise to be our speaker!
Radiating the full, active life he continues to enjoy, George started by saying he has had five (5) careers:
1. Mining engineer (working in California gold mines during the summers while earning a mining engineering degree from UC Berkeley);
2. Lockheed design engineer;
3. US Army Ordinance officer and combat fighter pilot in the USAAF;
4. Research/test pilot for NACA and NASA and
5. Wine master for Cooper-Garrod Estate Vineyards.
After getting into pilot training and earning his silver wings as a USAAF fighter pilot, he served as a flight instructor in the Southeast Training Command. Finally by May 1944 he reached England with the 412th Fighter Squadron, 373rd Fighter Group of the 9th AirForce. Flying the powerful P-47 Thunderbolt, based in southeast England, George and his fellow pilots had the primary mission of destroying the German transportation system - - trains, trucks, barges, bridges, fuel dumps - - by ground attack, bombing and strafing.
On D-Day, June 6th, 1944, George was flying top cover over the Normandy Beaches, helping to protect our troops and Allies storming ashore. Although he had no enemy engagements on D-Day, he still "sees" clearly, from his top cover altitude, the incredible sights of thousands of ships and vessels strung all the way from Normandy to England!
Despite flying eighty-one combat missions in Europe - - including all the extremely hazardous ground attack missions, D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge - - George never had any hits or battle damage to his aircraft. Several of his wingmen, however, were not so fortunate, being shot down while flying right alongside George!
Shortly after D-Day, George and his squadron were relocated to a hastily created airstrip close to the Normandy beaches, near Bayou and Caan, France. From there, their main mission was to fly support for General George Patton's advance. He told of an amazing incident about one of his pilots who put all his surplus gear, collections, etc. into the P-47's belly tank for transferring from England to the advance airstrip in France. As this pilot arrived at the new airstrip, he made a "big pull-up and the belly tank broke loose, scattering all his belongings all over the area!"
As George said, the mission of his fighter group was primarily ground support and attack, strafing and bombing. Mixed into these experiences, though, were other exciting adventures. For example, he had the opportunity one day shortly after D-Day to fly escort for General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his C-47 into France near Paris, and had to remain airborne throughout Eisenhower's roundtrip flight.
On another occasion, George observed an ME163 ("Komet" rocketplane) zoom right through a flight of USAAF bombers and fighters, then just disappear while still climbing. From his angle, at altitude, George said it appeared the ME163 was accelerating straight vertically!
In all 81 missions (again, primarily ground attack, not top cover where air combat opportunities were more likely), he had the opportunity to engage German aircraft only three times - - and he nearly became an Ace anyway!
On the first encounter, he was "on the deck" after a bombing run and spotted a single ME109. They tangled and became embroiled in tight circles on the deck. Neither pilot could gain an advantage - - although he tightened his steep banking turn to the verge of stalling, it forced George to yield each time - - and finally, running low on fuel by now, George had to break off and head home.
The second encounter came while dive-bombing barges on the Rhine River. His top cover spotted a large group of what they originally thought were Allied aircraft, but turned out to be nearly 40 ME109's! After his bomb run - - and despite the disadvantage of being on the deck again and outnumbered by over 4:1 - - George and his seven fellow P-47s put their planes "to the firewall" and climbed to the attack. George succeeded in shooting down two ME109s, savoring his first air-to-air kills.
Next, his third and final encounter came in late December, 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge near Brussels, Belgium. Right after the maddening dense fog lifted he took off to attack German airfields. At about 10,000 feet he spotted, in his rear view mirror, an ME109 that amazingly ended up flying "wing" on one of his squadron mates! Someone yelled "break!", and the ME109, realizing his error, abruptly climbed back into the clouds and escaped. Shortly afterward, again at about 10,000 feet, George and the others spotted a large group of FW190s. In the ensuing dogfight, George shot down two of them and safely returned to base. That was his last aerial combat, totaling four aerial victories - - all high-performance fighters - - and coming so close to earning Ace status. (If only he had had another engagement or could have coaxed a little tighter turn out of his mammoth P-47 during his first encounter with the ME109?!)
Having flown 81 missions and earned enough points by March 1945, George was eligible to return to the United States. Being a graduate engineer from Berkeley and an experienced pilot, he knew about the NACA (predecessor to NASA) at Ames in Mountain View, CA. Plus, before Pearl Harbor he had married his lifelong sweetheart, Louise Garrod, and lived in the foothills near Ames where he applied for a job as a test pilot. He initially was told there were no openings, but he persisted and learned from another test pilot (Jim Nissen, who later became a San Jose aviation legend) that, yes, they badly needed more test pilots.
What followed were 15 years of exciting, productive research - - test flying at Ames/Moffet Field. George told us that many people felt he had the best job in America! During that time he flew 135 to 150 different types of aircraft, with most of the research flying done in maximum dives! He eventually rose to become the Chief Test and Research Pilot at NASA-Ames.
George shared many experiences that happened during these high-risk years of flying, but space allows only a couple of examples. One dealt with a Douglas XSB2D, a follow-on version of the "Dauntless" dive-bomber. It had the big Wright 3360 radial engine and was prone to engine fires and failures. On one particular test flight the engine started failing over Los Gatos, about 12 miles southwest of Moffet, and heading back northeast right over Sunnyvale at about 1000 feet altitude the engine quit completely. He knew he couldn't make it to the field and had to crash land, so he spotted a prune orchard off to the right. Diving to maintain flying speed, he aimed the big XSB2D between two (2) rows of prune trees and put it down. The fuselage fit between the rows, but each wing sheared-off prune trees like they were matchsticks. "We eliminated about 84 prune trees and came to a stop in a cloud of dust." George and his passenger engineer climbed out and were met quickly by a speeding pickup truck. The driver, a vegetable farmer and a friend of George named John Alonzo, ran up, recognized George and exclaimed, "George, what are you doing here?!" George replied, "You asked me to drop-in and see you sometime and here I am!" After a fast ride to John's nearby house to call Moffet - - since their airborne radio communications had been abruptly ended (!) - - and have a drink of bourbon insisted upon by friend John, the day ended "routinely".
Another incident involved a P-47 fitted with a Curtis electric prop (full-feathering prop). George was testing the feasibility of using the reversible pitch prop as an airbrake, for better stability, control and accuracy in dive-bombing. He had asked the designers what should be done if the propeller would not reverse back to normal. He was told "to press the red button". Well, on this particular test flight he reversed pitch, but the engine ran away and the prop would not come out of the reverse mode. He followed procedure and pushed the red button - - several times! No luck, so he used his altitude and dived to maintain flying speed for a quick return to Moffet. George jettisoned the canopy, just in case. Suddenly, without warning, the prop came out of reverse pitch, the plane surged forward and George added power to make a "normal" landing back at Moffet.
George's favorite airplane to fly was the F-86 Sabre. He did extensive research flying in it, much of it supersonic, by climbing to maximum altitude, pushing over into a vertical dive and recovering. This procedure produced about 15-20 seconds of supersonic flight conditions. At that time, George had more supersonic flight time than anyone else, including his friend Chuck Yeager! " It didn't count, though, because I was always going straight down and nobody would talk about it."
During this period of supersonic testing, George was producing sonic booms that the newspapers and public reported as "mysterious explosions" over the East Bay where he often flew. Actually, these were super sonic booms created by pulling out of the dives and thereby focusing all the shock waves. He simply moved further out to continue testing, and once an airport manager at Los Banos yelled-out "there go those damn geologists again, testing for oil!"
Another exciting chapter for George was flying all the new carrier planes for the Navy - - 41 different types - - to develop carrier-approach landing characteristics for what constituted a well-designed aircraft. George said this was great fun!
He also spent considerable time at Edwards AFB for many programs. He was there the day Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier and sat-in on many debriefing meetings. Over the years of test flight, George became good friends with many other famous pilots including Bud Anderson and Bob Hoover!
Beyond all his fundamental test and research flying, George is a Founding Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He authored and presented in New York City one of their very first papers, entitled "Understanding and Interpreting Pilot Opinion". And he proposed and developed a quantitative rating scale, reflected in a writing called "Use of Pilot Rating in Evaluation of Aircraft Characteristics". This is now an international standard and even translated into Russian.
He worked on the early part of our nation's space program and re-entry issues. This program involved centrifuges and the study of how a pilot or astronaut can handle/control an aircraft in various conditions, in every direction: "eyeballs up, down, in, out,". Also, how the re-entry heat can be controlled and managed. This work involving George, occurred while our first (Mercury) astronauts were being selected. Later, after considerable results were developed, John Glenn and Alan Shepard came to experience and learn firsthand, bringing George into direct contact with them.
While at NASA he also spent seven years working on the Super Sonic Transport (SST), heading-up the study of handling and control characteristics. This work brought George considerable flight time in the SST Flight Simulator.
By 1972 George decided he would retire the following year from test flying. So, in 1973 he entered his 5th career, as a wine maker. He planted the first grapes then and has been expanding for nearly eighteen years already, going commercial in 1991 under the banner "Cooper-Garrod Winery". Now with twenty-one active acres producing grapes for all their varietals, he says "I've never worked so hard in my life!" He and his nephew do most of the work running the operation and business, and George is reputed to be the oldest active winemaker in California, if not the U.S. Considering he will turn 84 on May 17th of this year, we all can appreciate his zest and ambition!
Even after his retirement in late 1972, however, NASA called him back as a consultant for twelve more years, while he still continued with his winemaking. During these twelve years George helped develop many valuable programs, including Aviation Safety and Human Factors; Aviation Safety Reporting System; Captain's Training; and Cockpit Research Management (CRM) for United Airlines. As part of developing the Captain's training, George traveled the world numerous times to meet with all the major airlines, which led the airlines to agree that such a program should extend beyond just the Captain position and include the entire cockpit crew (thus the CRM).
Many special awards have come to George from the aviation and engineering communities - - National Academy of Engineering (1991); Founding Fellow of Experimental Test Pilots; NASA (Ames) Hall of Fame; internationally recognized author, -- plus, more and more gold medals for his wine making!
Our sincere gratitude and respect to George E. Cooper for being our speaker. He truly is a vital man who continues an amazing life of action and contribution!