John Herschel Glenn
Project Mercury Astronaut

John H. Glenn, Jr., a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was born July 18, 1921 in Cambridge, Ohio. He considers New Concord, Ohio his permanent home. He is 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall, weighs 168 pounds and has green eyes and red hair. His wife is the former Anna Margaret Castor, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. H.W. Castor. The Glenns have two children; John David, 14, and Carolyn Ann, 13. His parents are Mr. and Mrs. John H. Glenn. The elder Mr. Glen is a retired operator of a plumbing and heating business. The elder Glenns and Castors all live on Bloomfield Road in New Concord. Glen also has a sister, Mrs. Jean Pinkston, of Cambridge.

Glenn attended primary and high schools in Concord and attended Muskingum College there. Glenn entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in March 1942. He was graduated from this program and commissioned in the Marine Corps a year later. After advanced training, he joined Marine Fighter Squadron 155 and spent a year flying F4U fighters in the Marshall Islands. During his World War II service he flew 59 combat missions. After the war, he was a menber of Fighter Squadron 218 on North China patrol and had duty in Guam. From June 1948 to December 1950, he was an instructor in advanced flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas. Glenn thenattended Amphibious Warfare School at Quantico, Virginia. In Korea he flew 63 missions with Marine Fighter Squadron 311 and 27 while an exchange pilot with the Air Force in F-86 Sabrejets. In the last nine days of fighting in Korea, he downed three MIGs in combat along the Yalu River. After Korea, Glenn atended Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Maryland. He was assigned to the Fighter Design Branch of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington from November 1956 to April 1959, during which time he also attended the University of Maryland. In April 1959 he was selected as an astronaut for Project Mercury.

Glenn has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on five occaisions, and holds the Air Medal with 18 clusters for his service during World War II and Korea. In July 1957, while project officer of the F8U, he set a transcontinental speen record from Los Angeles to New York, spanning the country in 3 hours and 23 minutes. This was the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed. He has more than 5100 hours of flying time, including 1600 hours in jet aircraft.

The Glenn family hobbies are boating and water skiing.