Anthony LeVier; Lockheed Jet Test Pilot

Anthony W. LeVier, who tested one of the first jet aircraft and went on to pilot 53 different experimental planes at the dawn of the jet age, has died. He was 84.

LeVier died Friday of complications of cancer and kidney failure.

He first climbed into the cockpit when he was 15 and went on to chalk up more than 10,000 flying hours in more than 24,000 flights. In a 1990 interview with The Times, LeVier said Charles Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris in 1927 inspired him to become a pilot, and a lucky find at a movie theater financed his first flying lesson.

“We were barefooted, and going down the aisle I noticed what appeared to be a dollar bill and I picked it up with my toes, palmed it and went to the seat. It turned out to be a $10 bill,” he said in 1990. “And the first thought came to mind, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m going to go take my first flying lesson.’ ”

With that lesson began a decades-long passion that catapulted LeVier, sometimes at Mach 2 and occasionally at an altitude of 70,000 feet, to the top of the elite ranks at Lockheed’s super-secret Skunk Works unit in Palmdale.

Among the planes LeVier christened were the P-38 Lightning in 1942, which saw combat during World War II over England and the Pacific, the TF-80C Shooting Star trainer, then one of the world’s fastest airplanes, and the high-flying U-2 reconnaissance plane in 1955. LeVier flew more than 260 airplanes in his career as a test pilot.

LeVier has also been credited with several aviation innovations, including the first afterburner ignition system for jet fighters and voice-activated intercoms for military aircraft. He also conceived the idea to turn the pilot’s stick grip counterclockwise in fighter aircraft to allow better handling.

In his later years, he was an outspoken advocate for air safety and lobbied the Federal Aviation Administration for stricter training guidelines for commercial pilots.

In November, former astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn presented LeVier with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Aviation and Air Safety from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.

Surviving LeVier are his wife, Neva Jean LeVier; his two daughters, Marylynn LeVier and Toniann LeVier; and five grandchildren.

Funeral services are planned for Saturday, which would have been LeVier’s 85th birthday, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.