Yeager had first flown faster than the speed of sound. His first flight in a rocket plane was in the Bell X-1B, a successor to the plane Mr. Armstrong had been hired as an experimental test pilot for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, at Edwards Air Force Base. Other survivors include a stepson and stepdaughter a brother, Dean a sister, June Armstrong Hoffman, and 10 grandchildren.Īfter his first marriage, the newlyweds moved to California, where Mr. They lived in Indian Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati. Armstrong married Carol Knight, a widow 15 years his junior she also survives. The couple were divorced in 1994 Janet Armstrong lives in Utah. A daughter, Karen, died of an inoperable brain tumor in 1962. They had two sons, Eric and Mark, who survive. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.” Armstrong told his biographer, “I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. “All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight,” Mr. He thought aviation history had already passed him by. It was exciting but bittersweet for the young student. Yeager broke the sound barrier in the rocket-powered Bell X-1. Armstrong’s first year at Purdue, Charles E. In “First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong,” James R. Armstrong was a Navy fighter pilot who flew 78 combat missions, one in which he was forced to eject after the plane lost one of its ailerons, the hinged flight-control panels on the wings. His college years were interrupted by the Korean War, in which Mr. Armstrong.) From there, he went to Purdue University as an engineering student on a Navy scholarship. Neil became an Eagle Scout when the family later moved back to Wapakoneta, where he finished high school. It must have made an impression, for by the time he was 15, he had learned to fly, even before he got his driver’s license. At the age of 6, Neil and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor airplane, known as the Tin Goose. His father was a state auditor, which meant the family moved every few years to a new Ohio town while Neil was growing up. 5, 1930, in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, to Stephen Armstrong and the former Viola Louise Engel. Armstrong for a NASA oral history, described him as “our nation’s most bashful Galahad.” His family called him “a reluctant hero who always believed he was just doing his job.” Armstrong “carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all.” The historian Douglas Brinkley, who interviewed Mr. Bolden also noted that in the years after the moonwalk, Mr. Bolden Jr., the current NASA administrator, said, “As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own.”
“And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time,” the president added, “he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.”Ĭharles F. Armstrong’s death was reported, President Obama, in a statement from the White House, said, “Neil was among the greatest of American heroes.”
Armstrong noted that his boot print was less than an inch deep - and set up a television camera and scientific instruments and collect rock samples.Īfter news of Mr. The moonwalk lasted 2 hours and 19 minutes, long enough to let the astronauts test their footing in the fine and powdery surface - Mr. But before it ended, human beings had reached that longtime symbol of the unreachable. Then it touched greatness in the civil rights movement, only to implode in the years of assassinations and burning city streets and campus riots. The ’60s in America had started with such promise, with the election of a youthful president, mixed with the ever-present anxieties of the cold war. The Apollo 11 mission capped a tumultuous and consequential decade.