Raised near Wapakoneta, Ohio, he earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue while training as a Navy midshipman and later flew combat missions in the Korean War. After the war he became a test pilot at NACA, logging flights on experimental aircraft such as the X-15, and joined NASA’s second astronaut group in 1962. His first spaceflight on Gemini 8 achieved the inaugural docking of tw…
