Richard F. Gordon Jr. - Wikipedia

Richard Francis Gordon Jr. (October 5, 1929 – November 6, 2017) was an American naval officer and aviator, chemist, test pilot, and NASA astronaut, and an American football executive. He was one of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, as the Command Module Pilot of the 1969 Apollo 12 mission which orbited the Moon 45 times.[1] Prior to his lunar flight Gordon had flown in space as the Pilot of the 1966 Gemini 11 mission.

Gordon joined the United States Navy, and received his wings as a Naval Aviator in 1953. He then attended All-Weather Flight School and jet transitional training, and was subsequently assigned to an all-weather fighter squadron at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida.[4]

In 1957, he attended the United States Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, and served as a flight test pilot until 1960. During this tour of duty, he did flight test work on the F-8U Crusader, F-11F Tiger, North American FJ Fury, and A-4D Skyhawk, and was the first project test pilot for the F4H-1 Phantom II. He served with Fighter Squadron 121 (VF-121) at the Naval Air Station Miramar, California, as a flight instructor in the F4H-1 and participated in the introduction of that aircraft to the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. He was also flight safety officer, assistant operations officer, and ground training officer for Fighter Squadron 96 (VF-96) at Miramar. He logged more than 4,500 hours flying time with 3,500 hours of those hours in jet aircraft. He was also a student at the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California.[4]

He won the Bendix Trophy race from Los Angeles to New York City in May 1961, flying an F4H-1 in which he established a new speed record of 869.74 miles per hour and a transcontinental speed record of 2 hours and 47 minutes.[4][5]