Retired Lt. Colonel Fitzhugh “Fitz” L. Fulton has died at the age of 90 years. Fitz was one of the greatest test pilots this country has ever known and spent the majority of his life either flying for the military in war and piece time operations or working as a pilot in some of the most dangerous, exciting, ground braking, and astonishing aircraft of the 20th century.
Fulton was the pilot for the mothership that dropped all the vaunted X-planes from its belly, he was a project pilot on the B-58 bomber in which he set an altitude record, he was a project pilot on the YF-12A which was the father of the SR-71 and an aircraft in which he flew at Mach 3, after WWII he was part of the Berlin air lift, he flew the 747 which served as the launch vessel when NASA was developing the space shuttle, he was a test pilot on the awesome XB-70, and he is a member of the national aviation hall of fame which stands as one among a heap of accolades he earned during this career.
Fitz was a test pilot during the “Right Stuff” days and if you have ever read the book it illustrates the life and perils of his occupation in ways that I’m not sure anything has before or since. Death was an ever present risk in that line of work and it took someone who was not a cowboy as much as they were an intensely brave and confident engineer to do what Fitz did. There are plenty of stories of test pilots literally reading their instruments calmly over the radio as they stuff aircraft into the ground when mechanical failure or other calamity struck. Such was the intensity of their focus. Fitz was (by all the accounts that we have read and from notes we have gotten from people that interacted with him) a personable and humble guy who enjoyed talking about the job he so loved to do.
It is incredible to think about the advancements that happened from the time of Fulton’s birth to the time of his retirement from military flying in the 1980s. The year he was born, the land speed record was 152mph. Less than 40 years later, he was flying the YF-12 to speeds of over 2,000mph and just before he hung up his spurs he was helping to test a reusable spacecraft. Horses probably out numbered cars still in 1925 and there he was at the literal bleeding edge of the spear in the 1960s, pushing aviation technology to places where no one knew it could go. Yes the slide rules may have said it was possible but physically doing it took Fulton and his ilk. It gives me chills to think about those flights and what courage and confidence it had to have taken. I’m only sorry I never met the man.
Lastly and certainly not leasty (very much out of chronological order) I need to mention Fulton’s distinguished service flying during hostile times. He flew more than 225 trips in C-54s during the Berlin Air Lift, he flew 55 combat missions over North Korea in a Douglas B-26 Invader, and he completed test pilot school in 1952. Fulton was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and five Air Medals for his work during the Berlin situation and his flying during the Korean conflict.
There are test pilots who got pretty famous. Guys like Chuck Yeager come to mind and we’re certainly not saying anything ill against Yeager but isn’t there something neat about a guy who is a total bad ass and never really feels the need to brag about it? This was not a guy who wanted headlines, he just wanted the next plane, the next challenge, and the next opportunity to test the limits of human ingenuity and creativity. Fitz Fulton lived for 90 years but did a whole lot more living than that.
Godspeed, Sir.
That’s Fitz Fulton on the left.
