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Gemini IV ..Pilot
. First American to preform EVA
Gemini VII ..
Backup Command pilot
Apollo I
After graduating from West Point, White transferred from the Army to the Air Force, became a jet pilot and attended the Edwards Air Force Base Test Pilot School. He was assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Because he wanted to become an astronaut, he was unhappy about his assignment to the testing of Air Force cargo planes. However, this was a blessing in disguise. His test aircraft was a KC-135, which created zero-gravity conditions. He flew about five hours in weightlessness preparing four of the original seven Mercury astronauts for space flight as well as the two chimpanzees who journeyed to space before the astronauts. The assignment assisted Ed White in being selected with the second (nine member) group of astronauts.
On September 17, 1962 NASA chose White to be one of the nine out of more than 750 applicants to become an astronaut. In 1962, he was pilot of Gemini IV (first American to perform extravehicular activity), backup command pilot for Gemini VII, and had been selected to be command module pilot for the first manned Apollo flight. On his EVA flight, Ed White carried a gold cross, a Star of David, and a St. Christopher medal. He commented, "I took these... to express...the faith I had,...in the people and the equipment...and...in my God." On Friday, January 27, 1967, during a routine test of Apollo One's Spacecraft 012, Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee perished in a fire on the launch pad. Ed White would have been among the first three men to launch the Apollo mission to land a man on the Moon.
From NASA web site.
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