When the first jets were being tested at what Muroc Army Air Field, later renamed Edwards Air Force Base, a test pilot put on a gorilla mask and flew upside down beside a private pilot.
“Well, when this guy went back, telling reporters, ‘I saw a plane that didn’t have a propeller and being flown by a monkey,’ well, they laughed at this guy — and it got where the guys would see [test pilots] and they didn’t dare report it because everybody’d laugh at them,” says Barnes.
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