Who was Deke Slayton?
- Aeryn Avilla
- Mar 1
- 8 min read
Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton (1924 - 1993) was an American astronaut selected for flight during the Mercury program and flew onboard the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. During his nearly 23 years with NASA, he served as the first Chief of the Astronaut Office, served as Director of Flight Crew Operations, and was responsible for selecting some of the most famous space explorers in history.
Slayton was born in Sparta, Wisconsin on March 1, 1924 and was raised on his parents' farm. When he was five years old, his left ring finger was severed while clearing a hay mower. On his 18th birthday, four months after the United States entered World War II, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet. He commissioned in April 1943 after completing training in Vernon and Waco, Texas, and was assigned to a B-25 Mitchell crew, though he wanted to fly fighter aircraft.
Wild Blue Yonder
Slayton served in the 340th Bombardment Group in the European theater. While sailing near the Strait of Gibraltar en route to Naples, Italy, his ship came under attack from German U-boats. While stationed in Naples, he flew combat missions over the Balkan Peninsula and after 56 sorties first as copilot then as pilot, returned to the US in May 1944. In April 1945, he joined the 319th Bombardment Group on Okinawa Island and flew seven A-26 Invader bomber missions in the Ryuku Islands. His final mission was on August 12, only three days after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. After the war, he served as a B-25 instructor in Albany, Georgia, and Boca Raton, Florida, before separating from the Army Air Corps in 1946 [1].
Slayton graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering in 1949 and moved to Seattle, Washington to work for the Boeing Aircraft Company. While in college, he joined the Minnesota Air National Guard and was called to active duty in 1951. The following year, he transferred to the newly-established US Air Force and was stationed in West Germany, first as a maintenance officer at the Twelfth Air Force Headquarters in Wiesbaden Army Airfield and then as an F-86 Sabre pilot with the 36th Fighter Day Wing at Bitburg Air Base [2]. While in Germany, he met and married Marjorie Lunney and the couple would later welcome a son named Kent.
After returning to the States in June 1955, he attended and graduated from the US Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Between January 1956 and April 1959, he tested the F-101 Voodoo, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-104 Starfighter, F-105 Fighterchief, and F-106 Delta Dart. He also helped develop the Matador missile, the first operational American surface-to-surface cruise missile, and the English Electric P1B Lightning, Britain's first supersonic fighter jet. It was at Edwards where Slayton would get the nickname "Deke", a combination of his first and middle initials (D. K.), to differentiate himself from another pilot named Don in his class.
1959 was a turning point in Slayton's life and in the lives of six other men. Early in the year, he received top secret orders to report to Washington, D.C. in civilian clothes. He was one of 110 military test pilots invited to participated in screenings for Project mercury, the US's first manned space program, and one of only 39 candidates who underwent extensive physical and psychological testing at the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico [3]. On April 1, Slayton was selected as one of the nation's first seven astronauts.
Delta 7
Each astronaut was assigned a specific portion of Project Mercury to learn inside and out and teach his fellow pilots, and Slayton was tasked with familiarizing himself with the Atlas D Mercury Launch Vehicle to the fullest extent. Originally, four manned suborbital Mercury flights were to launch in 1961— Alan Shepard on Mercury-Redstone 3, Gus Grissom on Mercury-Redstone 4, John Glenn on Mercury-Redstone 5, and Deke Slayton on Mercury-Redstone 6. Mercury-Redstone 3 launched in May with Mercury-Redstone 4 launching in July. In August, after Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov became the second man to orbit the Earth onboard Vostok 2, NASA decided to cancel the two redundant upcoming suborbital missions and focus more heavily on the first American orbital flights. Glenn and Slayton were reassigned to Mercury-Atlas 6 and Mercury-Atlas 7. Slayton worked at the Mercury tracking station in Bermuda for Mercury-Atlas 4.
On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in his capsule Friendship 7. Scheduled to become the fourth American in space sometime in May, Slayton chose the name Delta 7 for his spacecraft. On March 15, the future of America's manned space program changed forever, though in a way that would not immediately be realized. Though his condition was first detected in 1959, Slayton was medically disqualified from spaceflight due to idiopathic atrial fibrillation, an erratic heartbeat. Mercury-Atlas 7 was instead flown by Scott Carpenter and his Aurora 7 spacecraft. But Slayton's journey with NASA was just getting started.
The Man with the Golden Heart
In 1962, NASA began planning to expand its astronaut office for the Gemini and Apollo programs. The agency was considering bringing in someone from the military to oversee the corps when Alan Shepard suggested Slayton take on this new position. His first role was selecting NASA's second group of astronauts, the New Nine, in September 1962. In October 1963, Slayton became assistant director of Flight Crew Operations, around the time he helped select Astronaut Group 3. He was promoted to its director in 1966 and continued to play a key role in selecting new astronauts and arranging crews for space missions, including those that would fly to the moon.
While grounded, Slayton was not eligible to receive a gold astronaut pin like those who made their first spaceflight. The crew of Apollo 1 planned to present to him his own unique gold astronaut pin with a diamond in the center after it had flown in space. After the Apollo 1 disaster killed all three astronauts, it was given to him by their widows and he proudly wore it the rest of his life— except for a few weeks when it visited the moon during Apollo 11.
During the rest of the '60s and early '70s, Slayton did everything possible to return to flight status, including quitting smoking and drinking coffee— the two main vices of those in Mission Control. In March 1972, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration restored him to full flight status.
Thawing the Cold War
On February 9, 1973, Slayton, along with veteran astronaut Tom Stafford and rookie Vance Brand, was assigned to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). This mission was carried out jointly by the US and Soviet Union and shifted space from an area of competition to one of cooperation. Slayton was named the Apollo Docking Module Pilot. As part of their training, they frequently traveled to Star City, the cosmonaut training center near Moscow in the Soviet Union [4]. In February 1974, after the conclusion of the Skylab program, Slayton resigned as director of Flight Crew Operations.
The Apollo spacecraft launched on July 15, 1975 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop the very last Saturn rocket. Soyuz 19 launched the same day. At 51 years old, Slayton became the oldest man in space, breaking the previous record set by then-47-year-old fellow Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard in 1971 when he commanded Apollo 14. Slayton's record was later broken by the 77-year-old fellow Mercury astronaut John Glenn in 1998 during STS-95 Discovery [5]. On July 17 high above Europe, the spacecraft rendezvoused and docked, marking the first of a number of dockings of American and Soviet/Russian spacecraft. Upon opening the hatch of Soyuz, commanders Tom Stafford and Alexei Leonov, the first person to perform an EVA, shook hands. This act signified the end of the Space Race, which had begun before Slayton was selected as an astronaut more than 15 years prior, and the ushering of a new era of international cooperation in space. Astronauts Stafford, Slayton, and Brand and cosmonauts Leonov and Valery Kubasov conducted joint experiments, ate and listened to music together, and exchanged flags and gifts. The Space Race may have been over, but Slayton's role in space exploration was far from it.
From December 1975 to November 1977, Slayton served as the manager for the Approach and Landing Test flights, which evaluated and verified the Space Shuttle Orbiter's airworthiness and approach and landing capability using Space Shuttle Enterprise. Following the conclusion of the ALT program and until February 1982, he managed the Orbital Flight Training Program in preparation for the first four Shuttle missions and oversaw the Boeing 747/Space Shuttle Orbiter ferry program. Slayton retired from NASA on February 27, 1982, less than five weeks shy of 23 years with the agency.
Slayton continued to work in the space industry, first serving as president and vice-chairman of Space Services Inc. He was the mission director for Conestoga 1, the first successful privately funded rocket launch, in September 1982. When Space Services Inc. merged with two other aerospace companies to form Space America Inc. in 1983, Slayton was promoted to chairman. Throughout the rest of the 80s, he was the director of Columbia Astronautics, served on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (an advisory board within the FAA), and was the president of International Formula One Pylon Air Racing.
Slayton had married Bobbie Belle Jones in October 1983 and was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 1992. He passed away on June 13, 1993 at the age of 69. He wrote his autobiography Deke!: U.S. Manned Space from Mercury to the Shuttle with space historian Michael Cassutt and co-wrote Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon with Alan Shepard. Both were published in 1994 after his death.
Slayton was inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame in 1990, the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1996, and the International Air & Space Hall of Fame in 2001. The Deke Slayton Memorial Space & Bicycle Museum in his hometown of Sparta and the Deke Slayton Airfest in La Crosse, Wisconsin are named in his honor. Two Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft, the lost S.S. Deke Slayton and the successful S.S. Deke Slayton II, were launched in October 2014 and December 2015 respectively.
Slayton has been represented in media numerous times, including in the movies The Right Stuff (1988) and Apollo 13 (1995), the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon (1998), the TV series The Astronaut Wives Club (2015), the movies Hidden Figures (2016) and First Man (2018), the historical fiction series For All Mankind (2019), and the National Geographic miniseries The Right Stuff (2020).
Author's note: Thanks for reading and be sure to like and share!
[1] Fellow Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom was also stationed in Boca Raton Army Airfield in 1945.
[2] The 36th Wing is now the host wing for Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.
[3] The First Lady Astronaut Trainees were also put through physiological tests at the Lovelace Clinic in 1960.
[4] This was not the first time an American astronaut traveled to the Soviet Union. In July 1969, Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman met with cosmonauts in Moscow and paid respects to fallen space heroes Vladimir Komarov and Yuri Gagarin at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
[5] As of March 2025, the current record holder for oldest person in space is Ed Dwight, a retired Air Force captain and the first Black astronaut candidate, who made his flight onboard Blue Origin NS-25 in May 2024 at age 90. Personally, I don't see this record ever being broken.
Bibliography
Gray, Tara. "Donald K. 'Deke' Slayton." NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/history/40thmerc7/slayton.htm
"History of Deke Slayton." Deke Slayton Memorial Space & Bicycle Museum.
Malik, Tariq. "Donald 'Deke' Slayton: Mercury Astronaut Who Waited More than a Decade to Fly in Space." space.com. https://www.space.com/24481-deke-slayton.html
Slayton, Donald K. and Cassutt, Michael. Deke!: U.S. Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 1994.
This post was written entirely without the use of AI (sorry HAL). Go Cats!
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