Test Pilots Get Walk of Honor in Lancaster

Everyone in the aeronautics community knew they had the right stuff, and now the city of Lancaster has made it official.

Chuck Yeager, Jimmy Doolittle, A. Scott Crossfield, Tony LeVier and Pete Knight--pilots who achieved dizzying heights in the early days of flight testing--became the first Saturday to be honored in Lancaster’s Aerospace Walk of Honor.

“They’re sure a different breed of cat from the rest of us,” said George Root, vice mayor of Lancaster. “They’re internationally known for taking phenomenal risks in one-of-a-kind aircraft to learn the planes’ limits, and some of them did it right here.”

Modeled after the Hollywood Walk of Fame and celebrity walks elsewhere, the sidewalk monument display had been shrouded in secrecy for months. Saturday morning, before the pilots’ names were announced at a $50-per-plate dinner that evening, the five granite monuments were installed on Lancaster Boulevard, boxed in black crates and guarded by volunteers from the Civil Air Patrol. Each 6-foot-tall, 675-pound monument bears a decorative, brushed aluminum medallion and name of the recipient.

“We kept it secret because we wanted to build excitement in the community, very much like the Academy Awards,” said Nancy Walker, a spokeswoman for the city.

Yeager, the legendary combat and test pilot immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff” about the chutzpah of the fliers, said in an interview last week that test pilots and movie stars are worlds apart.

“That’s a hell of a comparison--Hollywood movie stars and us,” Yeager, 67, said. “The test pilot lives a real life, not a fantasy. Basically, you have to remember duty enters into it--that’s paramount.”

In 1947, Yeager was the first pilot in the world to break the sound barrier, even though he had two broken ribs at the time. Knight, 61, set the world’s speed record in 1967 by flying the X-15 at Mach 6, or 4,520 m.p.h., twice as fast as a .50-caliber bullet.

Two of the pilots, LeVier, 77, and Crossfield, 68, were civilians who helped design and test high-powered aircraft. Doolittle, 93, is a retired Air Force lieutenant general who made the first successful “blind” or instruments-only flight in 1929. He is also renowned for voluntarily leading a raid by 16 B-25 bombers against Tokyo on April 18, 1942.

More monuments will be added to the Walk each year.