A Blast from the Past - Some Ancient History

Yesterday morning an old friend sent me a link to a photo of the crew of the Navy helicopter (side number 66 of squadron HS-4) that recovered the astronauts of the fated Apollo 13 lunar mission. At the time (April 1970) I happened to be the co-pilot of that helicopter and our squadron commanding officer, Chuck Smiley, was the pilot.

I'm the obnoxious (and very young) looking one in the right foreground. Chuck Smiley is in the left foreground. It was an honor to be so intimately involved in that historic event, an experience I will never forget.

To get a better view of the photo, visit the website on which it resides by clicking here. And if you're really interested, you can view a PowerPoint presentation on the Apollo 13 recovery operation. I put the presentation together some time ago using Navy and NASA photos, along with many others that I took myself. I've included the presentation below. To view it full-screen, just click on the icon in the lower right corner.

Apollo 13 Recovery

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by deacondana | Upload your own presentation

If you want to download the presentation to your PC and watch it later using PowerPoint, here's a link: Apollo 13 PowerPoint. I've also placed the individual photos on flickr.com. You can access a slide-show by clicking here.

It certainly brings back a lot of memories and, like the space program in general, reminds of God's greatness. What a gift His universe is and how blessed we are to be able to explore even one tiny corner of it.