- Credit: Naval Institute Press
Moon Men Return: USS Hornet and the Recovery of the Apollo 11 Astronauts by Scott W. Carmichael; Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland; (hardcover) $36.95; 2010.
Just in time to retro-fire yourself back to the days of Apollo 11 – this month marks the 41st anniversary of that great feat of human engineering and determination.
Author Carmichael has written an impressive, informative, and at times surprising account of Apollo 11’s splashdown and recovery on July 24, 1969. You’ll find many nuggets of new news in this captivating book that recounts the notable story of the USS Hornet’s recovery of the Apollo 11 crew after their dunking down in Pacific Ocean waters.
Carmichael has done us all a service by way of his research and writing skills, capturing behind-the-scene items that may have been lost to the past or forgotten in future decades. Ship sagas of getting the USS Hornet to the splashdown site on time; an account of then U.S. President Richard Nixon onboard the vessel; even narrative about a helicopter that narrowly avoided colliding with the Apollo command module due to heavy cloud cover.
The book also includes a never before published photograph of the Apollo 11 command module as it splashed down, including other photos not previously released to the public.
I found the sections that detail the Biological Isolation Garments (BIG suits) particularly fascinating, the clothing donned by the Apollo 11 crew meant to thwart the release of nasty moon-germs into Earth’s atmosphere.
Moon Men Return is a first-rate look at the history-making adventure of Apollo 11 – a book that puts into perspective an aspect of that milestone event little told, but now can be fully remembered.
For more information on this book, go to:
http://www.usni.org/store/item.asp?department_id=95&item_id=1851
By Leonard David