PILOTS' HONORS FIVE AVIATORS RECOGNIZED FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO AEROSPACE.

Byline: Daily News

LANCASTER - Five men were inducted into Lancaster's Aerospace Walk of Honor, which commemorates test pilots with ties to Edwards Air Force Base who have made outstanding contributions to aerospace.

The five plaques unveiled Saturday during an aviation-theme downtown street festival brought the walk's total to 80 pilots. This is the walk's 16th year.

This year's inductees are John ``Jack'' Allavie, Wallace ``Wally'' Lien, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Wilbert ``Doug'' Pearson, Edward Schneider and Richard ``Dick'' Thomas.

Lien died in 1994. The other four were all present for the ceremony.

Allavie's career included working as both a military and civilian test pilot. At Edwards, Allavie flew the B-52 mother ship on 90 of the first 110 X-15 rocket plane test flights.

After retiring from the Air Force, Allavie joined Douglas Aircraft Co. as an engineering test pilot. At Douglas, Allavie worked on the flight test programs of the DC-8, DC-9 and DC-10 jetliners.

Lien was an Army Air Force test pilot who flew the nation's earliest jets when Edwards was called Muroc. In the fall of 1943, he completed the first military performance tests of the Bell YP-59A. A few months later, Lien became the first military pilot to fly the Lockheed XP-80 jet fighter concept demonstrator.

Pearson made history in a 1985 test mission when he fired a missile from an F-15 fighter and destroyed a satellite in low Earth orbit, the first and only time that has been done. Pearson became Air Force Flight Test Center commander at Edwards before retiring from the Air Force.

Schneider flew for the Navy from 1968 to 1983, then joined NASA. At Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, Schneider flew the SR-71 in high speed research, an F-18 with an ``aeroelastic'' wing, and other craft.

Thomas logged more than 35 years in development and flight testing of military aircraft, most of that time while employed by Northrop Grumman. Thomas made the first flight of the secret Tacit Blue aircraft in 1982. The aircraft tested stealth technology.

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Photo:

(1 -- color) Inductees included, from left, Richard Thomas, John Allavie, Edward Schneider and Air Force Maj. Gen. Wilbert Pearson.

(2 -- 3 -- color) Above, Mycah, 3, sits in the cockpit of a Bearhawk plane at the aerospace street festival in Lancaster on Saturday.Members of the Boulevard Knights perform at the Aerospace Walk of Honor's aviation-theme downtown street festival.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer