Neil Armstrong’s secret lunar landing trainer is hidden in this Ohio museum

Neil Armstrong’s Moon Landing Trainer at Ropkey Museum

The Bell X-14B was a plane that could take off like a rocket but fly like a jet.

Built in 1957 from spare Beechcraft parts, it first shot up on February 19. NASA soon got hold of it, and by 1971 had turned it into the X-14B with new engines and fancy controls.

Neil Armstrong spent hours in this odd bird, learning to “perch on a bubble of hot air” before trying the real moon landing.

After a crash in 1981 and a close call with the scrap heap, this piece of space history found a new home at the Ropkey Museum.

The story of this unusual aircraft comes alive at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Ohio, where you can try a lunar landing simulator yourself.

Bell Built a Flying Bargain With Spare Parts

Bell Aircraft cobbled together the X-14 cheaply for the Air Force in 1957. They took wings from a Beechcraft Bonanza and added a T-34 Mentor’s tail.

The team put two British Armstrong Siddeley Viper turbojet engines at the center, using movable vanes to direct thrust instead of turning the whole engines.

Pilots flew in an open cockpit with no ejection seat, making test flights risky.

Ground tests started in October 1956, and on February 17, 1957, the X-14 made its first hover flight while tied down for safety.

The First Jet That Could Stand Still and Zoom Forward

Pilot David Howe lifted the X-14 straight up, hovered, and landed at Bell’s New York facility on February 19, 1957. The team spent over a year working out how to switch between going up and going forward.

On May 24, 1958, the X-14 pulled off its first complete change from hovering to forward flight and back. The X-14 became the first jet-powered aircraft that could take off and land straight up using thrust diverters.

NASA Grabbed the X-14 and Beefed It Up

NASA took over the X-14 from the Air Force in 1959 and quickly replaced the weak Viper engines with General Electric J85 turbojets that pumped out 6,000 pounds of thrust.

NASA called it the X-14A, gave it number 234, and sent it to Ames Research Center near Sunnyvale, California on October 2, 1959.

British test pilots Bill Bedford and Hugh Merewether flew the X-14 to get ready for their first flights in the P. 1127, which later became the famous Harrier jet.

Moon Landing Practice Started With This Odd Jet

As Apollo program plans grew in the early 1960s, NASA needed a way for astronauts to practice hovering like they would in the Lunar Module.

The X-14’s controls worked much like the thrusters that would guide the Lunar Module down to the Moon’s surface.

NASA used the X-14 while Bell Aerosystems built specialized lunar landing trainers. It gave astronauts their first taste of the tricky controls.

Neil Armstrong Learned to Float on Hot Air

Neil Armstrong spent lots of time flying the X-14 at Ames Research Center in 1965. He picked up control skills he later used in the Apollo lunar lander.

Armstrong said flying the X-14 felt like learning to “perch on a bubble of hot air. ”

He got so good at flying the X-14 that he could do zero-radius loops by carefully working the thrust controls.

The training pushed Armstrong to his limits, and he ran out of fuel more than once.

Old Plane Gets a High-Tech Brain Transplant

NASA upgraded the X-14A in 1971 with newer General Electric J85-GE-19 engines and renamed it X-14B with the number NASA 704.

The team added a computer and digital fly-by-wire control system, making the X-14B one of the first fly-by-wire aircraft.

The new computer could make the X-14B feel like other vertical takeoff planes. The cutting-edge system for the 1970s added auto-stabilization and computer control.

This Simple Jet Taught NASA Valuable Lessons

The X-14 research program gave NASA key info about VTOL aircraft control systems and helped pilots get used to jet-powered vertical flight.

More than 25 different pilots flew the X-14 during its 24 years with NASA, making hundreds of test flights at Ames Research Center.

The plane reached speeds up to 172 miles per hour and could climb to 18,000 feet. By 1980, Bell Aerospace had plans for an X-14C with a closed cockpit.

A Computer Bug Crashed the Veteran Aircraft

Pilot Ronald M. Gerdes took the 24-year-old X-14B up for its last flight at Moffett Field on May 29, 1981.

A flaw in the side-to-side control software caused the plane to wobble, and Gerdes couldn’t fix it while landing.

The hard landing broke the landing gear and cracked open a fuel tank, though Gerdes walked away unhurt.

NASA looked at the damage and decided it wasn’t worth fixing after 198 flights at Edwards and hundreds more at Ames.

The Historic Jet Almost Became Scrap Metal

NASA sent the damaged X-14B to the U.S.Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama, where it sat unrestored for years without proper display.

By the late 1990s, the historic aircraft wound up in a civilian scrapyard, facing complete destruction. When planes arrive at scrapyards, they usually get cut up quickly and recycled for their materials.

The X-14B looked doomed until word spread among military history fans about the aircraft’s sad situation.

A Military Collector Saved the X-14 From the Crusher

Rick Ropkey found out about the X-14B sitting in a scrapyard in 1999 and bought it right away to save it from destruction.

He arranged to truck the X-14B to his family’s Ropkey Armor Museum in Indiana, where his father Fred had built a collection of military vehicles and aircraft.

Rick also found and saved tons of related materials including large blueprints, test data boxes, and manuals.

Three Generations of Ropkeys Keep History Alive

Rick Ropkey and his son Noble worked on restoring the X-14B over decades, displaying it while fixing one part at a time.

When Fred Ropkey died in 2017, the museum moved from Crawfordsville to Indianapolis and became the Ropkey Armor and Aviation Museum with more focus on historic aircraft.

The family never planned to make the X-14B fly again but wanted to fully restore it for people to see, with the biggest challenge being finding parts for the GE J85 engines.

After surviving 24 years of NASA testing, the X-14B stays with the Ropkey family as a labor of love spanning thirty years.

Visiting Armstrong Air & Space Museum, Ohio

The Armstrong Air & Space Museum at 500 Apollo Drive in Wapakoneta honors Neil Armstrong’s legacy and Apollo history.

Take Exit 111 off Interstate 75 to get there. Admission costs $13 for adults, with discounts for seniors, veterans, and kids.

You can watch a 30-minute Apollo 11 documentary in the dome theater and explore galleries showcasing space exploration artifacts.

Plan 1-2 hours for your visit during their seasonal hours.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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