. >> how about deke slayton? >> deke, probably the most dedicated single-minded professional test pilot of the group. he was more dedicated to airplanes in general and how they worked i think than any other fellow in the group. >> alan shepard? >> born leader. came to the program with -- with a lot of experience and a lot of talent. and it showed up in his choice as the first spaceman in this country. >> how about scott carpenter? how would you see him fitting into that group? >> i leave that to others. >> very good. you had early assignments in "mercury." do you remember what they were? >> communications and navigation and that's as a result of my experience at the naval air test center with equipment and techniques that had to do with earth observation and photography and communications. >> did those specialties pay off for you a little later in the program, communication, navigation? >> well, if those -- those sciences, if you will, were the ones that i was directed to follow. so i had a background that was he

because obviously this is going to bring you into direct discussion about a fella named deke slayton and we haven't established the fact that deke like you was knocked out of flying, so let's go back over a little of that, particularly because that happened back in the "mercury" days when deke was getting ready to fly. >> right. >> and i wonder when you first heard. >> yeah, deke had already been assigned to follow john, uh-huh. right. >> and suddenly he got bumped with his "mercury" flight. that was a heart condition, wasn't it? >> yeah. there was a lot of controversy about that. because it was a heart murmur or a palpitation. some irregularity. but one which was not obvious. i mean, it was not a continuous kind of thing. it was not as if he was, you know, getting ready for cardiac arrest or anything like that. it was just occasionally he'd have a little twitch down there. >> but a real blow. i wonder what your reaction was to it at the time and if you can give us a little background on it. >> well, back in those days, as we have discussed before, we were still highly competitive. t

and slayton had been chosen to make the second orbital mission after glenn when he had this little heart murmur. as i say, it wasn't anything real noticeable. i mean, it wasn't continuous. it just showed up once in a while. but yet it made the medics very nervous. and even after really exhaustive tests showed that it was not repetitive to the point where it would have interfered with the mission, there was still the sense of, well, we just can't take a chance on anything on the hardware or the astronauts, so he was grounded. flat grounded. and at that point the feeling of competitiveness was deke turned into one of camaraderie. one of feeling sorry for him. a sense of, you know, well, let's get you back on the schedule, oh, old buddy, somehow, because you really felt sorry for him at that point. because it no longer was competitive. but on the other hand, to have a guy in that position, and knowing how tough -- how tough that could be to him. so, he was grounded. obviously the benefit for us was to have somebody -- someone of us who could immediately become a spokesman, because he had de