BUILDING NAMED FOR HEROIC FLIGHT SURGEON.

Byline: Daily News

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - A different kind of hero - but one particularly important to Edwards - was honored with the dedication of the Col. John P. Stapp Aerospace Medicine Facility.

A flight surgeon, Stapp was a pioneer in aerospace medicine and automotive safety who personally rode 600-mph rocket sleds in the late 1940s and 1950s as he researched the effects of extreme acceleration and deceleration on the human body.

``There is only one flight surgeon in the history of Edwards whose contributions are truly of historical significance: Col. John P. Stapp,'' Lt. Col. Mark Mavity, the 95th Aerospace Medicine Squadron commander, said at last week's dedication ceremony.

The $6 million, 30,000-square-foot facility, completed last month, will house base offices for flight medicine, public health, bioenvironmental engineering, optometry, physiology and medical readiness.

Stapp, who died in 1999 at age 89 in New Mexico, was represented at the dedication by his widow, Lillian.

Stapp volunteered from 1947 to 1954 at Edwards and at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico for rocket-sled experiments to learn how much gravity force a man could withstand. During the testing, Stapp suffered black eyes and cracked ribs from his 27 rocket-sled rides.

Later at Holloman, Stapp became interested in auto safety after he learned that more airmen were being killed in car crashes than in plane crashes. Stapp set up crash tests with salvaged autos that were slammed into wooden and concrete barriers.

Stapp's advocacy of seat belts helped spur federal laws requiring automakers to install seat belts.

``A lot of people from around the world - both aviators and motorists - owe their lives to the pioneering work that Dr. Stapp commenced on this base more than 55 years ago,'' said Jim Young, the Air Force Flight Test Center's chief historian.

After rocket-sled experiments using a test dummy called Oscar Eight- ball, Stapp had asked whether he could recruit test pilots. But, as Young said Stapp recalled years later, he was told the test pilots were too valuable.

``I was told to come out here and do it, and they didn't send anybody else with me,'' Young quoted Stapp as having said. ``So on Dec. 10, 1947, he made the first human sled ride himself,'' Young said.

In 1954, Stapp rode a sled to 632 mph in just 5 seconds over a span of 2,900 feet, then decelerated in 690 feet and 1.4 seconds to a stop, according to Young.

``He personally proved that the human body is, indeed, a very resilient mechanism,'' Young said.

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(color) Lillian Stapp, right, widow of aerospace-medicine pioneer John P. Stapp, talks with Capt. Al Goodnite after a new health-services building was named in her husband's honor at Edwards Air Force Base.

U.S. Air Force