— Ch. 1 · Childhood In Florida —
John Young (astronaut).
~7 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
John Watts Young was born at St. Luke's Hospital in San Francisco, California, on the 24th of September 1930. His father William Hugh Young worked as a civil engineer before losing his job during the Great Depression. The family moved to Cartersville, Georgia, in 1932 and later settled in Orlando, Florida, in 1936. Young attended Princeton Elementary School there while his mother suffered from schizophrenia and was hospitalized at Florida State Hospital. After Pearl Harbor, his father joined the U.S. Navy as a Seabee and left Young and his younger brother Hugh with a housekeeper. He returned after the war to work as a plant superintendent for a citrus company. Young competed in football, baseball, and track and field at Orlando High School before graduating in 1948.
Naval Aviation And Test Flying
Young applied to become a naval aviator but was initially selected as a gunnery officer aboard the USS Laws out of Naval Base San Diego. He completed a Pacific deployment as a fire control and division officer on the Laws in the Sea of Japan during the Korean War. In May 1953 he received orders to flight school at Naval Air Station Pensacola where he flew the SNJ-5 Texan. He then underwent helicopter training flying the HTL-5 and HUP-2 models before completing that training in January 1954. Young graduated from flight school and received his aviator wings in December 1954. He was assigned to Fighter Squadron 103 to fly the F9F Cougar and deployed with the Sixth Fleet to the Mediterranean Sea in August 1956. In September 1958 VF-103 deployed again to the Mediterranean Sea aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. Young graduated second in his class at the United States Naval Test Pilot School in 1959 and worked alongside future astronaut James A. Lovell Jr. testing the F-4 Phantom II fighter weapons systems. In 1962 he set two world time-to-climb records in the F-4 reaching 8,000 feet in 34.52 seconds and 25,000 feet in 227.6 seconds.