William R. Pogue

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William Reid Pogue (January 23, 1930 – March 3, 2014) was an American astronaut, US Air Force fighter pilot, and test pilot who was also an accomplished lecturer, public speaker, and author. Pogue, a native of Oklahoma, graduated from college and enlisted in the United States Air Force, which lasted for 24 years.

He served during the Korean War and with the elite USAF Thunderbirds.

He worked as a flight instructor and mathematics professor, as well as a two-year stint with the RAF (UK). Colonel Pogue, an Air Force instructor, was accepted into NASA in 1966.

He spent time on the moon as a pilot on the last crew of Skylab.

The crew set a new record (84 days) in NASA for more than 20 years, and on orbit, hundreds of research studies were conducted.

The mission was also listed for a dispute with ground control over schedule management that news outlets dubbed "The Skylab Mutiny." Pogue resigned from both the USAF and NASA just a few months after being barred from Skylab.

He taught, lectured, consulted, and wrote about aviation and aeronautics both in the United States and abroad for the past 30 years.

He died in 2014, age 84, survived by three children, four stepsons, and his third wife.

Early life and education

William Pogue was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, to Alex Wallis Pogue (1904–1998) and Margaret Frances Pogue (née McDow; 1906–1994) and is of Choctaw ancestry. William had four siblings; two sisters and two brothers. Pogue attended Lake Elementary School and Sand Springs High School (now Charles Page High School) in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, completing his high-school education in 1947. He was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, receiving the rank of Second Class. Pogue obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in 1951. He graduated from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with a Master of Science degree in Mathematics in 1960.

Personal life

William Pogue married three times; his first marriage was in 1952 to Helen Juanita Dittmar, with whom he had three children. The couple divorced later. He married Jean Ann Baird in 1979 and the union lasted until Baird's death in 2009. Pogue's last marriage was to Tina, whom he wed in 2012.

Pogue died of natural causes at his Cocoa Beach, Florida, during the night of March 3, 2014. Tina, three children from his first marriage, and four stepsons from his second marriage were able to save him. Celestis, a memorial rocket service launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket on June 25, 2019. At Sand Springs, Oklahoma, a plaque honoring his life was unveiled.

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Career

Pogue was attracted to flying at an early age; he first flew an airplane when he was in high school. In 1951, Pogue enlisted in the United States Air Force (USAF), but the aviation cadet training program was introduced. He was later transferred to the USAF as a second lieutenant. During the Korean War, he served with the Fifth Air Force from 1953 to 1954 on a tour of duty. Pogue was a member of the USAF Thunderbirds from 1955 to 1957 as an aerobatics pilot.

Pogue pilots have operated on more than 50 varieties and styles of American and British aircraft, and have been certified as a civilian flight instructor. From 1960 to 1963, Pogue worked in the mathematics department as an assistant professor at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In 1962, he applied to become an explorer but was turned down due to a lack of pilot experience. Pogue completed a two-year tour with the British Ministry of Aviation as part of an exchange scheme between the USAF and Royal Air Force, and graduated from the Empire Test Pilots' School in Farnborough, England, in September 1965. He was an Air Force major at the time and transferred to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, where he had been an instructor at the United States Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School since October 1965.

Pogue was one of 19 astronauts chosen by NASA in Group 5 of the Apollo program in April 1966. He served as a member of the Apollo 7, Apollo 11, 13 and Apollo 14 missions. He succeeded Ed Givens, who died in a car crash, as the Apollo 7's Capsule Communicator. No crew members were assigned to the cancelled Apollo missions, but Pogue would have been named as the command module pilot for the Apollo 19 mission if normal crew rotation had been followed.

Pogue, the pilot of Skylab 4, the third and final crewed visit to the Skylab Orbital Workshop, from November 16, 1973 to February 8, 1974, was the pilot of Skylab 4. It was the longest crewed flight to that point at 84 days, 1 hour, and 15 minutes. When the crew of Soviet ship Salyut 6 spent 140 days at the space station, it held the record for the longest spaceflight until 1978. Pogue was accompanied by Commander Gerald Carr and science pilot Edward Gibson on a 34.5 million (55.5–1012 km) flight. They carried out 56 experiments, 26 science demonstrations, 15 subsystem specific goals, and 13 student studies in 1,214 revolutions of the Earth.

There were differences between crew and ground control after about six weeks of flight. Radio transmission was cut off on December 28, 1973, with the crew spending the time relaxing and gazing at the Earth from orbit. The incident was later identified as the Skylab mutiny. After radio communication had resurfaced, Pogue said that the team was "studying the Sun, the Earth below, and ourselves." A long distance between radio transmission and the flight had not been struck, and tensions were greatly reduced. In 1985, Pogue said that the flight had made him more compassionate, saying, "I try to bring myself into the human situation rather than attempting to function like a robot."

Using Skylab's Earth resources experiment package camera and sensor array, the crew also collected extensive evidence of the sun's processes, and the Apollo Telescope Mount, which made extensive observations of the sun's processes, took up 338 hours of operations. During an extravehicular activity, Pogue and Carr observed a comet transiting the sky (EVA). In two EVAs outside of the orbital workshop, he logged 13 hours and 34 minutes. Pogue resigned from the USAF as a colonel and astronaut to become vice president of the High Flight Foundation on September 1, 1975. During his career, Pogue completed 7,200 hours in flight, including 4,200 hours in a jet jet and 2,000 hours in space flight.

William Pogue, a space consultant and a producer of general-interest videos about space flight, was self-employed after he resigned from NASA. Pogue wrote a book entitled How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space? in 1985, responding to 187 common questions about spaceflight. He co-wrote The Trikon Deception, a science-fiction book coauthored by Ben Bova in 1992. He also worked for aircraft manufacturers, including Boeing and Martin Marietta, in order to develop space station technology. Pogue has been giving lectures for more than 40 years, as well as 100 civic clubs.

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