ALAMEDA Calif. (CN) — Sitting docked in the cold waters of Seaplane Lagoon off the coast of Alameda is a 27,000 ton Essex-class aircraft carrier with an illustrious history.
The carrier — one of just four of its kind left in the world — served in World War II, where it destroyed 668 Japanese planes and dozens of ships.
But more than its combat record, what makes the USS Hornet special is its former role as a primary recovery ship in the Apollo 11 and 12 moon landings. After the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk in 1969, the Hornet recovered its three astronauts — Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins — from their spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean.
Today, the USS Hornet is the largest remaining artifact in the world from those missions. It now houses a museum dedicated to the Apollo flights and other early space voyages.
The carrier was set to be scrapped in the 1990s. Its connection to the Apollo missions helped save the historic vessel, said Bob Fish, a trustee of the museum.
“Hornet had become a registered historic landmark while it was in the mothballed fleet, waiting to be scrapped,” Fish explained in an interview aboard the ship. “We used the fact that it was a historic landmark to sue the Navy, to break the scrapping contract [and] to create a museum.”
The museum is a hidden gem in the East Bay, housing numerous artifacts from the Apollo missions — including a test command module like those used to land astronauts on the moon, a mobile quarantine facility from Apollo 14 and a Sea King helicopter used in the movie Apollo 13.
After researching how the floor plan looked the day the Apollo 11 astronauts came aboard on July 24, 1969, Fish aimed to recreate it down to the finest detail in the hangar bay. Most exhibits are accessible and not behind plexiglass, so that visitors can step back in time and touch history, he said.
The Hornet’s ties to space exploration date back to at least 1966, when the ship recovered a command module from the Pacific Ocean near Wake Island. That module, CM-011, was unmanned and used to test the capabilities of the actual lunar command module used during the Apollo 11 mission.
In 1969, the Hornet had finished its third tour of duty in Vietnam when it was chosen to pick up the Apollo 11 astronauts.
“NASA said, ‘We don’t want a helicopter landing ship. We need an aircraft carrier with a full medical department and the ability to launch and land aircraft,’” Fish explained. It didn’t hurt that the Hornet had recovered CM-011 just three years prior.
In the 1960s, NASA knew it had the capability to send rockets and people into space — but there was no certainty that the astronauts could return safely.
For their return journey from the moon, the Apollo 11 astronauts traveled in a lunar command module named Columbia. A 9,000 pound, 8-foot by 10-foot living quarters, Columbia was designed to land safely in the Pacific Ocean, where the astronauts could be retrieved.
Once the capsule splashed down, three helicopters went to pick them up, Fish said. After finding the capsule, Underwater Demolition Team members anchored and put a flotation collar around it before helping the astronauts disembark from the module.
Because of fears of contamination, the demolition team and astronauts wore BIG (biological isolation garment) suits.
“The world was worried,” Fish said. “If something could survive the harsh atmosphere of the moon, we were worried if it came to Earth it could be a plague that we literally couldn’t stop.”
Clancy Hatleberg, then 22, was the Underwater Demolition Team leader in the water that day. It was his job to prevent any lunar pathogens from contaminating the Earth.
