John A. Manke


John Arnold Manke Sr. was an American test pilot and aerospace engineer. He was the first person to achieve supersonic flight in a lifting body and first to land a lifting body on a runway. He was director of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center from 1981 to 1984.

Early life

Manke was born in Selby, South Dakota in 1931. He studied at the University of South Dakota before joining the U.S. Navy in 1951. After his Navy service, he attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he was selected for the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps and earned a degree in electrical engineering in 1956.

Career

After graduating from Marquette, Manke joined the U.S. Marine Corps to serve as a fighter pilot. He left the service in 1960 as a Major in the Marine Corps Reserve and worked for Honeywell Aerospace as a test engineer for two years.
He joined NASA on May 25, 1962, as a flight research engineer. He was assigned to the pilots' office and flew multiple support aircraft, including the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Douglas F5D Skylancer, General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark, and Douglas C-47 Skytrain.
Manke served as a North American X-15 flight planner and completed X-15 ground school with Michael J. Adams. Together, they conducted a test run of the Reaction Motors XLR99 engine at the Rocket Engine Test Facility. He left the X-15 program in 1967 after Adams was killed in an accident during the third X-15 flight.
In 1968, he began piloting rocket-powered wingless lifting bodies optimized for spaceflight. He became the first person to attain supersonic speed in a lifting body on May 9, 1969, during his test flight of a Northrop HL-10. Manke also flew the Martin Marietta X-24 and Northrop M2-F3 a record 42 times. His precision unpowered landing during a test flight of the X-24B at Edwards Air Force Base on August 5, 1975, prompted design engineers of the Space Shuttle to forego jet engines, initially intended to aid shuttle landing approaches. He also flew exploratory flights in the fly-by-wire Vought F-8 Crusader to develop control system design changes for the space shuttle.
Manke became facility manager and chief of flight operations at Dryden, and later at Ames Research Center when the two NASA centers were integrated. He served as director of flight operations at Dryden and Ames from October 1, 1981, until his retirement on April 27, 1984.
He participated in technology development for programs including the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier, X-15, Northrop B-2 Spirit, and Grumman X-29. In total, Manke flew 4,500 hours in 56 different aircraft. He earned his Mach 3+ pin flying the Lockheed YF-12 Blackbird.
He died in Lancaster, California in 2019, aged 87.

Awards

Personal life

He married Marilyn Manke in 1954, and the couple lived together in Lancaster, California. They were married for 65 years and had 5 children.
Manke was Catholic and served as a eucharistic minister for Lancaster's Sacred Heart Parish. He built and flew his own lightweight aircraft and gliders. He was a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.