HORNET PLUS 3 - Recently discovered Apollo 11 Splashdown film.

[@TransistionalMemories100]

What a fantastic find from Ebay and thank you for sharing some rare footage!

[@sabyegrp]

I was a QM2 second class petty officer working in Navigation on the Hornet during both Apollo 11 and 12. I was out on the bridge during splashdown of both 11 & 12. It was an exiting time for sure. The process of bringing the ship along side the capsule for pickup had been practiced several dozen times in the two weeks leading up to the recovery. Years later at a dinner at the USS Hornet museum I was sitting with Admiral Seiberlich. He not so jokingly indicated that his greatest fear was to hit and sink the capsule in the process of recovering it. Bringing an aircraft carrier up next to a tiny capsule, and coming to a complete stop in open ocean was not nearly as easy as one would think. Hence all the training. Both Admiral Seiberlich and Capt Lamb the XO at the time are interned at Arlington just a few rows apart. I was in attendance as an honorary pallbearer for Capt. Lamb, an amazing honor.

[@orbitcreativefilm]

Great info and interesting insight into the challenge of picking up the capsule. Thank-you!

[@forrestwiley9866]

I was very proud to have been there, standing in Hangar Bay 3 on the frontline next to NASA Camaraman.

[@orbitcreativefilm]

very cool to hear Forrest. must have been an exciting time!

[@ZenZaBill]

When I visited the Hornet (now a museum ship) I walked in those white footprints they painted on the Hangar Deck. They also have the training model of the Quarantine Facility Airstream trailer, on display, along with a boilerplate Command Module and other space and military stuff.

[@joijaxx]

How exciting!

[@maccmoses]

You may have known my Father he was a Photographer on the Hornet. Gary Michael Williams.

[@jdean2131]

That Amazing! To witness this historic event must have been incredible. I was 6 years old when I saw this living in the Bay Area with my parents. I was fascinated by the Helicopter which was one of the first military jet helicopter. Little did I know at that time that I would go on in life and fly that very same helicopter nearly 20 years later as a Navy Pilot/Aviator. Never get tired watching Apollo Missions.

[@goldenpacificmedia]

Thank you for posting this historical film!

[@SurferJoe46]

At 01:13, you'll hear the name of the ship that Nixon was on: The USS Arlington, (AGMR-2). I was on that ship and got to eat a meal and talk to the president for a while about where he was born and where I lived in relationship to that. We had a nice conversation and later on that evening, I got to call my wife in Costa Mesa, California, on one of the radio-telephones that the Secret Service carried for his use. It wasn't the Red Phone - it was black.

[@shawnmoore534]

My great uncle narrating. Pretty cool.

[@ilovebeinagirl]

Oooh, I bet you have some interesting stories that you could tell!

[@ironcicadamkw5241]

My great grand father somewhere in that mix on screen.

[@maccmoses]

My Father was on the Hornet and did alot of the filming. His name was Gary Michael Williams

[@brendasilvas7253]

I been on the ship since u didn’t know

[@brendasilvas7253]

And I got a dvd of it

[@narajuna]

Well nice to see good old honest Nixon, the President man that oversaw #11 to #17 moon landings, amazing the astronauts walked so normally for the first time back on earth, no hesitation whatsoever.

[@martinsargent5314]

i seen the hornet it is epic

[@paulw1906]

I miss America

[@markgray256]

This isn't "never before seen" footage. Nearly all of this material was released on DVD several years ago.

[@orbitcreativefilm]

You're right much of the footage does exist in other DVDs etc. This training film however, is quite unique in that it has RADM Seiberlich providing narration. You can also tell that its an internal Navy film that is a 'work in progress' as one of the intro slides at 0:31 has 'Commanding Officer' spelled incorrectly as 'Comanding Officer'!

[@Solinvencible]

Who was the first to step out the helicopter and get inside the quarentine room? Armstrong?

[@supersabrejet]

Who's with me? I think they made a huge mistake when they got the astronauts out of the capsule in the middle of the ocean, they should have tow the capsule all the way to the Hornet ''hatch close'' . then inside the hornet in a super seal area open the hatch and do all the MICRO biologicals precautions.Rigth? When they open the hatch in the middle of the ocean ,the air inside the capsule ESCAPED in to the atmosphere ....so if something "micro" was coming from the moon ,was released when the hatch was open!?

[@alberttatlock5237]

supersabrejet I Agree completely, if there were any moon Germs then they released them into the atmosphere as soon as they opened the capsule. We know it was only a precaution but as you stated, they didn't do anything to protect anyone, may just as well have not bothered and saved time. Sometimes I think that the quarantine tank was purely for dramatic effect

[@ilovebeinagirl]

ITA.

[@infiniteawesomeness9940]

Oh well, at least there weren't any :) Maybe we just got lucky...

[@ZenZaBill]

It was because if you bring the capsule onboard, pop the hatch in a tunnel that you try to seal up super tight, that some spooky contamination might still escape onto the ship and infect more people. A team still had to remove the boxes of Moon rocks, and secure the capsule for transport, so letting any "bugs" out at sea was determined to be a safer method. Safe in the way it was executed? No way. But I am sure the memory of the movie "The Andromeda Strain" was on everybody's mind, even though It came out only 2 months before first landing.

[@jpsned]

@@ZenZaBill Good points.

[@johneasler9967]

I love the USS Hornet, CVS-12. It's too bad people really believe this hoax, though

[@CHARLESA-km5gz]

Just an example of the U.S.A. doing something great & at the same time waging a worthless 10 year war in the third world country of Vietnam.

[@tachikaze222]

I've long thought it weird how we were galavanting up in orbit while failing to fully secure the Saigon regime from infiltration from the Communists. By '69 we'd already escalated way beyond what we had wanted to -- 500,000 troops! -- but the VC & PAVN managed to pick off 10% a year in casualties, just enough for our homefront to lose enthusiasm for our intervention, as the body bags and seriously wounded kept coming home year after year. Nixon wanted the war a non-issue for his reelection, and he got that.

[@CHARLESA-km5gz]

Recently watched a 10 part PBS series on Vietnam-- Remember this is my opinion, to have won that war you would have had to kill everyone to win---Westmorland's crossover point could never been achieved-- That should of been realized in the 50's at the French Din Buin Phu-- French lost 8 K-- V.C. lost 24 K and with a loss ratio like that they still declared that a victory-- I call it a slaughter

[@ual737ret]

CHARLES A. 12345 The Vietnam War was a big part of the reason why the Apollo program was cancelled. Tragic.

[@chuckolmstead2921]

You can thank Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger for the failure of Vietnam and no response to the North Korean downing of VQ-1 EC-121. Paris Peace Talks were nothing more than a delaying tactic of North Vietnam.