A Kansas native who commanded two space shuttle missions has passed away. Joe Engle died Wednesday, July 10. He was 91 years old. Engle was born in Chapman. He earned a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Kansas. After graduating from college, Engle enlisted in the U. S. Air Force. In 1963, he was assigned as one of two pilots to fly the X-15 research rocket aircraft. He became the youngest pilot ever to qualify as an astronaut and, in 1966, was one of 19 pilots selected for NASA space missions. Engle was slated to fly to and walk on the moon with Apollo 17, but budget cuts canceled the flight.
His family says Engle was blessed with natural piloting skills and “General Joe”, as he was known to many, was his happiest in any cockpit. Engle is the only human being to have flown two different types of winged vehicles in space, the X-15 and the space shuttle. He is the only astronaut to have manually flown the shuttle through reentry and landing. In November 1981 he commanded the second flight of the shuttle “Columbia”, manually flying the re-entry from mach 25 throughout the entire approach and landing – the first and only time that a winged aerospace vehicle was manually flown from orbit to a landing! Fly high Joe.
