Ex-NASA test pilot, DFC recipient dies at 85
The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Oct 3, 2007 6:49:27 EDT
LANCASTER, Calif. — Stanley P. Butchart, a former top research pilot for NASA and its predecessor agency, has died. He was 85.
Butchart had been in failing health and died of natural causes in Lancaster on Monday, said Alan Brown, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base.
Butchart was trained to fly as a civilian and then joined the Navy in 1942. In World War II, he flew TBM Avenger torpedo bombers in the South Pacific, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross, among other medals.
After the war, he earned bachelor’s degrees in aeronautical and mechanical engineering at the University of Washington and worked as a design engineer for Boeing Aircraft before joining the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ High Speed Flight Research Station in 1951.
He flew numerous research and mission-support aircraft in his 25-year career, becoming the center’s principal multi-engine aircraft pilot during a period of air-launches of early X-planes, NASA said.
Butchart received the NACA Exceptional Service Medal for actions to save his aircraft and crew when an X-1A rocket plane exploded while attached to the B-29 launch aircraft he was flying on Aug. 8, 1955.
In 1966, he became chief pilot and then director of flight operations at Dryden. He retired in 1976.
He is survived by four children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His wife, Miriam, died in 2002.
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