Deke Slayton’s Williams W-17 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Donald ‘Deke’ Slayton was among NASA‘s inaugural group of astronauts – the legendary “Mercury Seven” who repeatedly made history during the early 1960s. Deke participated in the groundbreaking Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in 1975.
Aviation had always been Deke’s passion. He served in combat during World War II and, following his astronaut career, purchased a 260mph Williams W-17 Stinger racing aircraft. Health issues had plagued Deke’s NASA career, and in his mid-sixties he received a brain cancer diagnosis.
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Deke Slayton [L] finally made it to space in 1975 (Image: Getty)
At age 69, the tumor he believed he had conquered returned aggressively: “And the worst part of him getting sick,” explains Jon B Allen, known as podcaster Mr Ballen, “was he hadn’t been able to fly a plane in months.” Sadly, many of Deke’s fellow space flight pioneers are now reaching the end of their lives – Apollo 13 captain Jim Lovell died last summer at the age of 97.
His illness had grounded Deke. The tumor’s effects caused persistent exhaustion, difficulties with speech, and serious balance problems. However, according to, there was one final flight. Jon reveals in a recent video how the NASA icon became central to a still-unsolved mystery.
Yet Jon reveals that Deke was determined, by any means necessary, to take to the skies one final time. His sleek Stinger sat 18 hours away by car in Sparta, Wisconsin, but Jon notes, “As Deke’s life was slipping through his fingers, all he found himself wanting to do was just go fly.” One night in June 1993, as Deke drifted off to sleep, he made a firm decision — he was going to fly a plane one final time, no matter what it took.
Early the following morning, officials at John Wayne Airport in Southern California, roughly 1,500 miles from Deke’s home in League City, began fielding a series of noise complaints.
The Mercury Seven: Deke is front row, second from left (Image: Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Jon recalls: “As soon as the manager got into his office, he heard his desk phone ring. And when he answered it, the person on the other end said they were a local resident and they wanted to make a complaint. There had just been a plane flying low over her house, making a ton of noise.”
That initial complaint was quickly followed by more calls, all reporting a sleek red aircraft performing daring low-level aerobatics over residential neighborhoods in the area.
John explains: “Some of the callers actually said that at certain points, this plane when they saw it had flown so low, they were able to read its identification number and they had written it down to report it. And so, they told the manager that it was N21X.”
Deke Slayton (Image: Getty)
That registration number belonged to a red Williams Stinger owned by celebrated astronaut Deke Slayton.
By the time authorities had traced the aircraft, it had apparently vacated the area. The John Wayne Airport manager opted to simply mail a letter to Deke, reprimanding him for the violations, and consider the matter closed. It was not until two weeks later that Deke’s wife Bobbie received a letter from John Wayne airport: “She was so confused because what this airport was claiming Deke did was literally impossible.”
Deke had given his cherished plane to a museum, and to showcase it most effectively, museum staff had taken out its engine and hung the airframe from the ceiling.
And there was another, far more important reason why Deke Slayton could not have been flying low over homes in Southern California that morning, Jon explains: “Five full hours before that recorded flight, Deke had passed away in his sleep. No one has ever been able to explain how Dee’s red Stinger plane ended up over the skies of California that morning.”