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  • Tony LeVier Tony LeVier
    Tony LeVier
  • Tony LeVier and a P-38 Lightning<br>bearing his name Tony LeVier and a P-38 Lightning<br>bearing his name
    Tony LeVier and a P-38 Lightning
    bearing his name
  • XP-80A "Gray Ghost" XP-80A "Gray Ghost"
    XP-80A "Gray Ghost"
  • Lockheed XF-90 Lockheed XF-90
    Lockheed XF-90
  • Tony LeVier on the XF-90 Tony LeVier on the XF-90
    Tony LeVier on the XF-90
  • XF-104 Starfighter XF-104 Starfighter
    XF-104 Starfighter
  • Herman "Fish" Salmon (left)<br>and Tony LeVier (1957) Herman "Fish" Salmon (left)<br>and Tony LeVier (1957)
    Herman "Fish" Salmon (left)
    and Tony LeVier (1957)
  • Tony LeVier congratulates Capt. Joe Jordan<br>on his F-104 altitude record<br>(December 1959) Tony LeVier congratulates Capt. Joe Jordan<br>on his F-104 altitude record<br>(December 1959)
    Tony LeVier congratulates Capt. Joe Jordan
    on his F-104 altitude record
    (December 1959)
  • Tony LeVier and his daughter Toniann,<br>Palmdale - Washington in a TF-104G<br>(May 29, 1963) Tony LeVier and his daughter Toniann,<br>Palmdale - Washington in a TF-104G<br>(May 29, 1963)
    Tony LeVier and his daughter Toniann,
    Palmdale - Washington in a TF-104G
    (May 29, 1963)
  • Tony LeVier and his daughter Toniann,<br>"Mach 2 Miss Starfighter" Tony LeVier and his daughter Toniann,<br>"Mach 2 Miss Starfighter"
    Tony LeVier and his daughter Toniann,
    "Mach 2 Miss Starfighter"
  • Tony LeVier in Al Letcher's<br>Hawker Hunter (Mojave, circa 1978) Tony LeVier in Al Letcher's<br>Hawker Hunter (Mojave, circa 1978)
    Tony LeVier in Al Letcher's
    Hawker Hunter (Mojave, circa 1978)

Tony LeVier

Anthony W. "Tony" LeVier (February 14, 1913 – February 6, 1998) was an American air racer and test pilot for the Lockheed Corporation from the 1940s to the 1970s. Chief engineering test pilot of Lockheed from 1945, he made the first flights of some twenty new aircraft, among them the XP-80A, the T-33, the F-94 Starfire, the XF-90, the XF-104 Starfighter and the U-2, and flew more than 240 different types during his career. Kelly Johnson, head of the Skunk Works, used to say that he liked LeVier to fly his aircraft first because he always brought back the answers.

Early life

Born Anthony Puck in Duluth, Minnesota, he lost his father while still young. His mother, Aloysia Evans, moved Tony and his older sister Nancy to southern California for the warmer climate. While Tony was a teenager, his mother remarried Oscar LeVier, who gave the children his name.

Inspired by Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight of 1927, he announced to his family at 14 that he would become a pilot; his mother simply told him to "be a good one". He took his first flying lesson in 1928 in Whittier, then worked as night watchman and mechanic for Whittier Airways, spending most of his $100 monthly wage on flying lessons. He obtained his commercial licence in 1932, at 19, and spent the following years as flight instructor, charter pilot and barnstormer.

Pre-war air racing

LeVier started air racing in 1936, first in Los Angeles, then at the National Air Races in Cleveland. In 1938 he flew for the first time a Keith Rider racer dubbed The Firecracker, owned by air racing enthusiast Bill Schoenfeldt. He won the Pacific International Air Races at Oakland and then the Greve Trophy in Cleveland, at an average speed of almost 251 mph (404 km/h); his landing after that race was rough and damaged the aircraft too heavily to allow him to compete for the Thompson Trophy the next day. A year later, he was back in Cleveland and placed second in the Thompson race.

After the 1939 races, LeVier got his first formal job as a mechanic with the Douglas Aircraft Company, hoping to be promoted to test pilot. Frustrated by his chances there, he earned an instrument rating and flew for Mid-Continent Airlines in Kansas City, then became a test pilot for the General Motors research laboratories, where he flew an experimental engine developed by Charles F. Kettering.

Lockheed and the P-38 Lightning

LeVier joined Lockheed in 1941, ferrying Hudson bombers to Canada for delivery to the Royal Air Force. His job description was changed to engineering test pilot in 1942, to fly the PV-1 Ventura.

His test flying was instrumental in proving the Lockheed P-38 Lightning design. Alternating with chief test pilot Milo Burcham, he flew a long series of high-speed dives to study compressibility ("Mach tuck"), which caused the aircraft to nose down uncontrollably at high speed. These tests led Kelly Johnson's engineers to fit the dive flaps that solved the problem.

In 1944, LeVier visited the Eighth Air Force bases in Great Britain, then commanded by Jimmy Doolittle, as a special technical representative. He gave lectures and demonstration flights to show the engine-out reliability of the P-38 and the way to recover from a dive, and left England less than a week before the Normandy landings.

The P-80 Shooting Star

Back in California, LeVier became project pilot of the P-80 Shooting Star, America's first operational jet fighter. On June 10, 1944, he made the first flight of the XP-80A "Gray Ghost", powered by a General Electric I-40 engine. He also proposed several practical improvements, such as a stick grip turned counter-clockwise for better control with the right hand, and trim switches placed on top of the stick.

In October 1944, Milo Burcham was killed in the crash of a production P-80, and LeVier succeeded him as chief engineering test pilot in January 1945. On March 20, 1945, during a high-speed test of the first XP-80A over Muroc, the turbine wheel of the engine disintegrated and cut off the tail of the aircraft. LeVier, without an ejection seat, bailed out at low altitude and was badly injured on landing: he could not fly for six months.

Post-war air racing

After the end of World War II, LeVier bought a war surplus P-38 Lightning for $1,250 in Kingman, Arizona. He modified it for air racing and painted it bright red. He competed at the National Air Races in Cleveland in 1946 and finished second in the Thompson Trophy after a dazzling display of aerobatics. In 1947, he founded LeVier & Associates with Lockheed colleagues, among them test pilot Herman "Fish" Salmon, to build the Cosmic Wind midget racers; his own, Little Toni, raced in the Goodyear Trophy. That same year he won the Sohio Trophy in his P-38 and finished fifth in the Thompson race, then retired from air racing.

Chief engineering test pilot

In 1946, LeVier flew the Lockheed Saturn light airliner on its first flight (June 17), and was co-pilot, with Joe Towle, of the giant XR6O-1 Constitution on November 9, 1946. He also supervised the testing of the P-2 Neptune and the Constellation.

He tested two evolutions of the P-80: the T-33 two-seat trainer, which he flew for the first time on March 22, 1948, and the three variants of the F-94 Starfire (first flight of the YF-94 on April 16, 1949, of the YF-94C on January 19, 1950). He also flew the first flight of the XF-90 penetration fighter on June 3, 1949, and performed most of its tests; in a dive with this aircraft, he became one of the first pilots to exceed the speed of sound. In 1949, he conceived the first practical afterburner ignition system for jet fighters; he later designed an automatic wing stores release system (1951) and the master caution warning light (1952), and contributed to the refinement of Lockheed's hydraulically boosted flight controls.

On February 28, 1954, the XF-104 Starfighter made a short hop during a taxi test at Edwards with LeVier at the controls; the official first flight took place on March 4, 1954. The F-104 Starfighter became the first operational fighter of the US Air Force capable of Mach 2, and LeVier is credited with being the first pilot to exceed 1,000 mph in it.

In 1955, LeVier was chosen to test the top-secret U-2 at Groom Lake, Nevada. On August 1, 1955, during a high-speed taxi test, the aircraft became airborne unexpectedly at about 70 knots; LeVier managed to bring it back to the ground. The official first flight took place on August 4, 1955.

Director of flying operations

On May 23, 1955, LeVier was appointed Director of Flying Operations of Lockheed's California division, which ended his career as an active test pilot. For about ten years, he managed the Starfighter Utilization Reliability Effort with the NATO air forces using the F-104, a program aimed at improving training and reducing the accident rate. He also assisted Jacqueline Cochran when she set women's speed records on a Lockheed F-104.

On May 29, 1963, he flew the two-seat TF-104G demonstrator from Palmdale to Washington, D.C. with his 18-year-old daughter Toniann in the front seat. In 1972, he took an L-1011 TriStar on a world tour promoting Lockheed's newest and largest airliner, and flew one from California to Washington on what was presented as the first completely automatic flight of a commercial aircraft.

LeVier retired from Lockheed on April 29, 1974. Over his career, he logged some 10,000 flight hours in more than 24,000 flights, survived several accidents including a mid-air collision, and made the first flights of about twenty aircraft. In 1985, he founded Safe Action in Flight Emergency (SAFE), a non-profit organization that trained civilian pilots to handle emergency situations. Around 1978, he was photographed at Mojave in the cockpit of Al Letcher's Hawker Hunter, the first Hunter flown in the United States. He published his autobiography, Pilot, written with John Guenther, in 1954. He died on February 6, 1998, in California, eight days before his 85th birthday.

Honors

  • National Aviation Hall of Fame.
  • Aerospace Walk of Honor (Lancaster, California), 1990.
  • San Diego Air & Space Museum International Aerospace Hall of Fame, 1993.
  • Godfrey L. Cabot Award of the Aero Club of New England, 1995.
  • National Air and Space Museum Lifetime Achievement Trophy, 1997.
  • James H. Doolittle Award of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), of which he was a charter member.
  • Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, 2001.

The Society of Experimental Test Pilots annually presents the Tony LeVier Flight Test Safety Award. The museum of the P-38 National Association at March Field is housed in the Tony LeVier Hangar.

First flights

Incomplete list of first flights piloted or co-piloted by Tony LeVier at Lockheed:

  • XP-80A "Gray Ghost" : June 10, 1944.
  • L-75 Saturn : June 17, 1946.
  • XR6O-1 Constitution : November 9, 1946 (co-pilot, with Joe Towle).
  • P-80R "Racey" : 1946.
  • TP-80C / T-33 Shooting Star : March 22, 1948.
  • YF-94 Starfire : April 16, 1949.
  • XF-90 : June 3, 1949.
  • YF-94C Starfire : January 19, 1950.
  • XF-104 Starfighter : February 28 / March 4, 1954.
  • U-2 : August 1 / August 4, 1955.

References: Wikipedia (en), "Tony LeVier"; National Aviation Hall of Fame; Motorsports Hall of Fame of America; San Diego Air & Space Museum; This Day in Aviation; P-38 National Association; Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register.

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