Military Career
Richards was commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy upon graduating from the University of Missouri in 1969 and was designated a Naval Aviator in August of the following year. From 1970 to 1973, he flew support missions in the A-4 Skyhawk and F-4 Phantom airplanes while assigned to Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 33 (VAQ-33) at Norfolk Naval Air Station, Virginia. He subsequently reported to Fighter Squadron 103 (VF-103) and deployed to the North Atlantic and Mediterranean aboard the USS America (CV-66) and USS Saratoga (CV-60), flying F-4 airplanes. Selected for test pilot training, he reported to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland in 1976. A tour in the Naval Air Test Center's Carrier Systems Branch and F/A-18A Program Office of the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate followed Test Pilot School graduation. Over the next 3-1/2 years, Richards served as a project test pilot for automatic carrier landing systems development work in F-4 and A-7 aircraft and also conducted approach/landing/catapult flying qualities and catapult minimum end speed performance testing of a prototype "slatted" F-4S airplane. As carrier suitability project officer for the F/A-18A Hornet airplane, he made the first shipboard catapults and arrested landings during Initial Sea Trials of the F/A-18A on board the USS America in 1979. He was reassigned to Fighter Squadron 33 (VF-33) in May 1980 and was en route to that assignment when notified of his selection as an astronaut candidate.
Read more about this topic: Richard N. Richards
Famous quotes containing the words military career, military and/or career:
“The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)