Hornet Plus Three

On July 16, 1969, a Saturn V rocket lifted Apollo 11 off Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Eight days later, on July 24, the command module Columbia reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, deployed three parachutes, and splashed down 920 miles southwest of Honolulu. Thirteen miles away, USS Hornet (CV-12) — an Essex-class carrier that had survived kamikaze attacks at the Philippines and Okinawa, served three Vietnam tours, and been selected as Prime Recovery Ship for Apollo 11 — closed in. Helicopters from HS-4 squadron pulled astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins out of the capsule. Wearing biological isolation suits, they were ferried to the Hornet, walked across the hangar deck, and entered a Mobile Quarantine Facility — a converted Airstream trailer where they would live for the next 21 days while doctors confirmed they hadn't brought lunar pathogens back to Earth. President Richard Nixon was waiting on the carrier and welcomed them through the MQF window with a televised speech. Hornet returned to Pearl Harbor on July 26 with a banner reading "HORNET PLUS THREE." Four months later, on November 24, 1969, the same ship recovered the all-Navy crew of Apollo 12 — Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Alan Bean — within two miles of the carrier. Hornet was decommissioned in 1970 and became a museum at the former Naval Air Station Alameda in 1998. The flight deck where the Apollo astronauts first walked on Earth after the Moon is open to the public. KOAK approach passes within sight of the ship. The hangar still smells faintly of a working carrier.