Lieutenant Colonel John "Jack" E. Allavie was the project pilot for "Hurry - Hurry" which was designed to determine take off procedures and problems associated with "in-line" and formation take offs at maximum weights. He was the B-52 launch pilot for the first flights of the X-15 rocket plane.
The results from project "Hurry – Hurry" were crucial to national security because the U.S. government and the Air Force knew that, in the event of a nuclear attack, a response would have to be launched within ten minutes.
After graduating in 1955 from the Empire Test Pilot School in Farnborough, England, he moved to Edwards Air Force Base Flight Test Operations. In 1958, he was one of only two pilots assigned to the B-52/X-15 flight test program, completing 60 flights by 1962. Later, he flew the B-58 for escape capsule system tests. These tests were conducted from 70 knots on the runway to Mach 2 at 46,000 feet.
Allavie was the only military pilot on the United States Supersonic Transport (SST) source selection team in 1964, followed by a role as a member of the USAF Aerospace Plane Evaluation Team.
In 1966 he retired from the Air Force and joined Flight Test Operations at Douglas Aircraft Company as an experimental test pilot, initially assigned to military test programs followed by flight testing of the DC-8, DC-9, MD-80 and DC-10/KC-10. Allavie is a Fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He has logged 18,000 hours flying more than 120 different aircraft.