Apollo 13: Bonus 1. Jim Lovell

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Hi, I'm Andrew Lockbaker, the series producer of 13 Minutes to the Moon.

This is one of two bonus episodes for you, released in the week of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 13.

It's an edited version of the conversation that Kevin and I recorded with the legend that is Captain Jim Lovell, commander of that mission.

We had the great privilege of interviewing him over two mornings at the community library near his home north of Chicago.

Now, we knew we were going to get some great storytelling because we'd interviewed Jim about his first flight around the moon on Apollo 8 for season 1.

But I'd forgotten about his sense of humour and the Lovell laugh, which rings out not infrequently between Jim's tales of danger after danger and threat after threat.

Anyway, I've stitched the recordings from the two mornings into one piece.

It covers a lot of ground, from the traumatic moment of the explosion to the enormous relief at Splashdown.

We're going to start this just before the explosion happens.

Two days, eight hours after liftoff, Jack Swaggart in the command module has thrown the switch to stir the faulty liquid oxygen tank.

Jim and Fred Hayes have wrapped up their TV broadcast from Aquarius.

We had just finished.

Hayes was still in the spacecraft.

I was taking the camera back down to the command module when suddenly there was

a big bang.

Now in the past Fred liked to have a little joke and there was a switch that if you threw it, it was an oxygen tank thing, would go hist bang.

And he'd love to do that because that was his idea.

It scared Jack and I.

What would happened again?

And so immediately on my way down into the command module, I heard this.

I thought that Hayes was playing games again.

So he likes to do that.

And I looked up and the expression on Hayes's face was entirely different.

He had no idea what was going on.

Then I looked at Swikert.

Swikert's eyes were as wide as saucers.

Neither did he have any idea what was going on.

But it didn't take long for us to get down in the command module, me to get down, and when I saw that two out of the three of the fuel cells have died.

So

that worried me.

And there was a sequence of events after that, one by one,

mainly the one when I looked out the side window and saw escaping at a high rate of speed a gaseous substance out into the vacuum, which was like a hose going out, that I knew we were in deep, deep trouble.

Just talk me me through that as you float into the command module.

What is it that you see?

You've heard a bang.

You float into the command module.

What is it that you see around you immediately that makes you realize that something's not right?

Well, what you see, first of all, is a red light.

Because the red light said, hey, there's something wrong with

your fuel cells.

And so then you go look at the fuel cells and you look at the gauges and two of them are not operating.

That gives you a little bit of a start.

And then you look around and your eyes happen to focus on the gauges that show you the quantity of the oxygen tanks.

And one of them reads zero.

Now that really gives you a start, but you all want to double check something.

So for some reason, which I can't tell you now, I looked out the window and that told me the answer.

And from that on, it was one of survival.

What was this venting doing to the attitude of the vehicle and the motions of the vehicle?

Was it stable?

Was it rocking around?

What was happening?

Well, the explosion caused the vehicle.

It was a pretty big bang, which eventually we know blew off part of the spacecraft.

And so we got back on the controls trying to control it.

Well, we still had attitude control

in the command module, and it took some time to get it under control but we did we got it under control there's this sort of gap in realization isn't there you on the vehicle know almost immediately that you're in trouble or as it takes the ground a little while to catch up

that's right they didn't couldn't believe it at first because you know multiple failures don't really occur that like that and uh but we knew what the story was when he said houston we have a problem here

we were understating the situation I've often wondered about that phrase, you know, Houston, we've had a problem.

It's a pretty low-key description for what is a potentially catastrophic event.

Did you deliberately choose those words?

Why did you couch it that way?

Well, that's exactly what it was.

We had a problem.

We didn't know how serious it was, and we didn't know what the problem was.

That's the other thing.

When that sentence was said, we didn't know how much oxygen was escaping from the spacecraft.

We thought it was an electrical problem.

We thought that we lost two fuel cells and we still had one and one fuel cell, believe it or not, would have given us enough electrical power to get around the moon and just get back home safely.

But when we lost all electrical power, there was nothing we could do.

It got to be, be over a period of time more and more serious.

Now your first thoughts, you've lost your electrical power.

You realize that at that point the mission to land on the moon is over.

What are your thoughts at that point?

Our first thoughts there were just what do we do?

How do we do to get home?

I think the idea of using the lunar module probably occurred to ground control and to the crew at the same time.

That idea of using the lunar module as a vehicle to get home if something happened had been thought of before, but not in the context of the way the explosion occurred.

And

you simulate an awful lot of contingencies back on Earth.

Had you ever simulated this, flying in this mode, pushing the command service module in this way?

No.

We had attached to the lunar module a 60,000 pound dead mass, the command service module.

Now the lunar module maneuvers around by itself because the little attitude thrusters fire through the center of gravity.

That's why when you push it one way, it goes that way.

But now the center of gravity is not in the center of the lunar module.

It's out to the command service module someplace.

Therefore, when I first started to maneuver, I didn't realize this, and I wanted to go left,

it went to some other place.

I wanted to go right, I want to go up, or down, and what's going on here?

Then it dawned on me that we had this command service module.

I literally had to learn how to maneuver all over again, knowing that when I put the stick one way, I'd know where the spacecraft would go.

And that's what we had to do to get back on the free return course to get back in the proper area

because it to me it seems like a sort of voyage from the sublime to the ridiculous you've got the Apollo guidance computer you've got a lot of automation in the way that you're steering the vehicle and now you're almost back to seat with the pants flying again well it was until we got the hang of how to maneuver it was all changed around a little bit and we didn't want to get rid of the command service module that's the only thing that would get us back home in In the early parts after the explosion, the early phase of this after the explosion, there's a lot of chatter between Mission Control and yourselves.

What was your impression of how Mission Control were coping with this and how dependent on them were you?

Well you have to look at this flight.

It's a tale of two groups.

One group in a comfortable control room fortified by hot coffee and cigarettes that had to make quick and correct decisions.

Also having a whole

industry complex behind them, you know, the manufacturers and everything to help them make decisions.

The other group in a cold, damp, crippled spacecraft, 200,000 miles from Earth, who had to correctly do those decisions made by the ground and control the spacecraft to do the job.

And so that's how I looked at it.

Because one of the things I heard in the first few minutes after the explosion, I think you or perhaps one of your crewmates reads down, you know, what are your recommendations?

Is that how it was?

I mean, you know something's going wrong, but you have to kind of wait for them to come up with solutions before you can enact them.

Well, we knew that we were going to get home without help.

And we were happy.

It was a joint effort.

I have to tell you one thing that I've thought about for years, that this explosion, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to NASA.

This was, after all, the fifth flight to the moon.

Oh, going to the moon again?

You know,

popularity dropped off.

It's old hat.

Where are they going?

What are they going to do?

Anything different?

And then suddenly the explosion occurred and everybody's, oh yes, and they got a new, they're more interest in the space program.

What's going to happen?

It kept thousands of people

around the world thinking about what next.

Are they going to make it?

Can they do it or can't they do it?

It made Mission Control heroes.

I mean, you know,

failure is not an option, which actually came from the pen of a scriptwriter for the movie.

So no one actually ever said failure is not an option during that mission.

No, no, no, no, no.

It was only until when the movie was being developed that failure is not an option.

And some nice script writer came up with that idea.

That was great.

But the other thing I'm interested in is, you know, it's all about the mission.

The mission is to land in the Frau Mara Highlands and do some exploration.

Very rapidly, I guess, it must have occurred to you that you're not going there anymore.

The thing that you've wanted to do for so long, land on the moon, is not going to happen.

And

how did you feel when you realized that was the case?

I was disappointed, but you have to realize you're 200,000 miles out.

You're in a spacecraft that's dying.

Landing on the moon was the last thing in my mind.

As a matter of fact, during the

conversation back to the Earth,

as we're preparing all these things to get us back, I looked over at Fred.

I said, take a good look out there.

It's going to be a long time before someone else is out here looking at what we're seeing.

And of course, mission control and everybody said, oh, why did he say that?

Oh, no, no.

Actually, it was a very good chance that I was going to be right.

Did you think that you may not survive this mission?

I had a very good idea that we weren't going to survive.

As a matter of fact, if we didn't, we were going to try our best all the way out until the oxygen left us and that was the end of the deal.

Jim, I want to just ask you something that I was thinking about last night, and it was this.

When the accident first happens, you're,

if not pessimistic, you have a sense that you may not survive this.

I have children now who are the same age as your children would have been.

If it were me in that situation, it would at least cross my mind as to whether or not I should talk to my family.

Did that occur to you?

No.

First of all,

you don't want to talk to your family until, obviously, you're not getting home.

And then

there have been some farewell

discussions, you know.

So was it the case that while you thought you had a fighting chance, it wasn't a good idea to distract yourself with conversations about what might be with your family.

It was focusing on the mission.

No, the thing was

it wasn't worthwhile to distract your family.

And of course

on Apollo 8 my two companions wrote farewell letters and I sent my wife a Christmas gift.

But on Apollo 13

I didn't have a farewell letter either.

And so I said,

so I've got to get back home.

You're approaching the moon now.

You've managed to check your alignment of your lunar module platform.

You know roughly that you've got some guidance.

Moon's getting big in the window.

And Fred Hayes and Jack Swiger are wanting to take a good look at it.

Tell me a bit about that.

We felt sort of sad, a little bit, looking down

and saw Mount Marilyn at a much higher distance than I did before.

And Mount Marilyn, tell me about that.

That's a feature on the moon that you named in honor of your wife.

Well, it was during the time of training for Apollo 8.

We had pictures now at photography of

the moon, and

it was pretty well thought of that the first lunar landing would be in the Sea of Tranquility.

And as we looked at our proposed orbits around the moon on Apollo 8, I noticed a little triangular mountain there right on the coastline of Sea of Tranquility, very distinctive because it was triangular in in shape and it had

one crater on it.

And it pointed right to where into the Sea of Tranquility.

And I said, that would be a good initial point for Apollo 11 to think about.

So I named it Mount Maryland after my wife.

And sure enough, Apollo 11 then came around and I think all of them said, oh,

we're over Mount Maryland and that's when they started.

It was the initial point to start the descent into the Sea of Tranquility.

Jim, you're there 130 miles or so above the surface of the moon, moving quite quickly.

You're looking down, you can see Mount Marilyn, you can see the landing site that you would have used for your Apollo 13 landing.

Must have been a moment of tremendous disappointment.

It was

probably a mixed emotions.

It was the fact that I realized that I wasn't going to land and I had studied the moon for so long and I could just as we started our way back towards the earth and got closer to the moon you know I could see where we were going to land and see the other places that I had seen on Apollo 8

but then again it was a case of

I don't want to be up here this is one of survival so far we're still alive and the earth is back in that direction and that's home and so

the concentration was on getting back home, not the fact that I didn't land on the moon.

You know, as a matter of fact, this explosion came at a very opportune time.

If you really think about this flight, if the accident occurred when Jack first stirred the liquid oxygen tank, when we first left the Earth to go to the moon,

we would have lost all of our electrical power, all of our oxygen.

And we'd have, the only way to get home, because we didn't have a big engine, was to go all the way out to the moon on the long elliptical orbit to come on back.

And that would have been a couple days out, a couple days back,

we'd have lost all of our electricity by that time.

We'd have been

a permanent monument in an orbit around the Earth.

And of course, if the explosion occurred later on, after we were in lunar orbit,

or on the lunar surface,

that would have been the end of the game.

You know, failure would have been the only option.

At this point in the mission, though, you're still just about to do,

you're still coming past the moon, you still have to get, make some decisions, and they've powered down the module because you don't have enough power to get yourself home.

What was the module like once you'd reduced the power in it?

Well, it was very quiet.

It just got cold, it just got damp, you know.

As it got cold, the moisture came out of the atmosphere

and we were worried.

We would go back into the command module and beads of moisture all through.

And of course, that worried us.

I know we had to turn it and get it back on again, but are we going to get shorts?

Are you going to get failures in the electrical system and things like that?

It got a little tiring.

I remember coming back that I could close my eyes and put my hands like this, and because I'm in zero gravity and I have a little strap on, I just floated and got sleep that way.

You didn't get a full sleep, you just fell off and

had a little rest, and then you woke up again.

When you were resting, where did you choose to rest?

Right on the instrument panel.

I mean, right inside of it.

The instrument panel in the lunar module.

Yeah.

I'm sitting here doing things.

I'm tied in.

I put my hands together like this, and I close my eyes, and I go to sleep.

And

I doze off, and then I kind of wake myself up again, and

look over and see what Fred's doing, and he's doing the same thing.

And

either that or someone's calling us, and

I can hear them on the radio.

Give me a sense of how cramped it was in there.

Because this is a tiny space.

There's no seats anyway, it's so small.

And now you've you've got not two but three people in there so what's it like

well Fred and I of course are in our same spots

the in the center of the lunar module is the cap of the engine the lunar module engine and it's it's like like a table with a flat part of the table a little round table and that was Jack's spot Now, we took off our spacesuits

because the suits have rubber rubber inside.

It's cold outside.

We're sweating on the inside.

We didn't want to do that.

So we decided, that's Fred and I, take off our suits and just suffer with the cold.

Jim, I want to take you to the part of the mission where you've passed the moon, you've done your burn at two hours after passing the moon, and now you're having to power down the lunar module really to its lowest power level.

Can you tell me what it was like once you shut it down to that degree, what it was like inside?

Well the vehicle of course

got colder and

very very quiet and we tried to shut down everything just to save power.

One of the big problems was the fact that we're also being poisoned by our own exhalation because in the lunar module we had a environmental system that would support two people for two days.

We were three people for four days.

And unfortunately, the canister, lithium hydroxide canister to remove the carbon dioxide was becoming saturated.

And

we didn't think about that ourselves, except that Mission Control was also monitoring everything, fortunately, and everything was still going down via telemetry.

that they noticed that the partial pressure of carbon dioxide was increasing.

And then Then we got

an orange light on indicating the same thing.

So there was a case of being slowly poisoned had we done nothing

by the time we got back to the earth we would be alive anyway because carbon dioxide would be poisonous in you know large amounts.

And that's where the ground came in for its initiative.

That's where they had Crew System Division, Mission Control, their division there, come up with an idea to using the canisters in the dead command module, which were still very good, although they were square, and this canister in the lunar module was sort of oblong, how to jury-rig it in the command module or the lunar module to make make it work.

And it did.

It came through.

And so that's one thing that really

saved us.

And it's an unusual procedure, that's because they totally have to improvise how they're going to take, you know, make a square peg fit in a round hole.

And they have to do that on the ground and then voice that up, read it over the radio to you, and you have to build it without seeing any pictures of it.

What was that like?

Well, not only that, but believe it or not, Houston didn't have a squared command module, lithium hydroxide device.

They sent a fellow who

in his airplane down to Kennedy to get one to bring it back and then they started to utilize it using you know

duct tape,

a piece of plastic, an old sock, a hose, lots of hose,

which we had on board.

And so we did it one step at a time and we were talking to them as we put out the duct tape to see how long it should be and things like that.

You know, these are things that

we could do.

Now the next thing, of course, is that you need a set of procedures or instructions to help you power up the command module and they haven't arrived yet.

And you were getting, I guess, a little impatient.

Tell me about that.

Well, as we were coming back home again and we were picking up speed as now the Earth has us under control and of course its gravity was pulling us back.

I kept looking at the Earth and it was getting a little bigger all the time.

And I thought to myself, we don't have the procedures to get the command module back in position.

We had to get the guidance system working again.

We had to get it reactivated.

And we had to make sure that all the environmental system was going back and everything like that.

And that was Jack Swiker's job, but he had

nothing to work with.

And so I got kind of curious or a little bit worried that the Mission Control down there had not yet put all their heads together to get that system back in operation.

And so I called down.

I said, you know what, guys, we got to hurry up.

I see the Earth coming in closer.

We need to know how to power up the command module.

I mean, they stall you a couple of times, don't they?

At one point, I think Joe Kirwin, in response to your question, says, You say, is there a checklist?

And he says, it exists.

I mean, how did, you know, that sort of characteristic humor from Joe Kirwin, but how did you receive those sorts of stalls?

And I think Vance Brand says, you know, we'll get it to your Saturday, Sunday at the latest.

And of course you were due to splash down on Friday.

Just a little bit too late.

But they did.

They got their act together and they started to really work at it.

And finally, they started to...

sent it up in pieces to Jack so he would start working.

And he was worried because, you know, turning on various things, and we didn't know whether there'd be a short or whether, you know, the water would do any damage to it at all.

Fortunately, no damage.

And I don't think I'd ever appreciated before just how much effort it was to read up those instructions because they had to be read up and copied down and then executed.

So tell me a bit about just the huge process that that was.

Well, there were occasions when I heard Jack say, say again, and he was trying to write this stuff down.

and

that I was listening in and someone came in and garbled that we didn't know exactly

whether the switch should be on or off or what the story was.

There was a lot of repetition and

rightly so just to make sure that everything was correct.

That was the whole tenure of coming home.

We wanted to take our time.

We didn't want to speed up too much and screw up everything and maybe do something that would put us in final jeopardy of never getting home.

So what we did was we worked slowly step by step.

And

this is all on scraps of paper you found around the module.

Well, we had the actually the back of the various books that we had, and Jack was writing the stuff on the back page of the stuff.

It took some time to do, but we had to get started, and that was the thing I was worried about was that they haven't really thought about it.

They, of course, had thought about it, but I didn't know it up there.

Were you impressed with his performance when he was powering up the command module?

Because I've realized now that that's a huge task.

Get it all copied down correctly, get it all activated correctly, and if it's not, you're in big trouble because you'll bleed your power too quickly.

That sounds like a huge challenge to me.

Yeah, but Jack Sweiker was probably

not really recognized for what he had done.

I mean, only because before we really started celebrating the thing, you know, he died.

But anyway, here's a replacement astronaut that just a couple days we all got together to work as a team.

And he's the one that has to do the original docking of the command module with the Luna module on the flight to the moon.

And yet he was able to do all that, take all that into consideration, get the words on the powering up the command module again and doing a job right, didn't screw up.

He was an integral part of the crew.

I'm very fortunate that the crew that we had, you know, Hayes and Swiker, were very competent people.

And by this time, you've been in space for nearly four days since the accident, nearly six days in total.

You must have been exhausted, cold, in pretty poor shape.

How did you feel in yourselves?

Well, we were cold.

We were kind of exhausted.

But you'd be surprised how long you can last if you're in deep trouble without a deep sleep.

I mean, and of course, when we finally got home, sleep was very, very nice.

In your medical pack, you would have had, I guess, some stimulants to help you with the tiredness.

Did you use any of that stuff?

I did not use any stimulants, which we could very well have done, but the problem was, if we took it too soon, we'd have been wide awake awake and up, but then when it wore off, you'd be in a worse shape than you were before.

You know, that was my thought, and so I stayed away from it.

So I wouldn't be so incapacitated once I took a pill that I really was too groggy to do a good job.

And Fred Hayes, of course, was beginning to get ill by now.

He was getting a little fever.

Were you worried about him?

Yeah, I was worried about Fred.

Fred was getting chilled, and I needed Fred sometime in the maneuvers,

and I wondered what the story was with him.

And, of course, we had our space suits off, and it was still kind of cold and getting colder.

And so

I

comforted him a little bit, put my arms around him, trying to get my body heat, get him some more heat in his body.

So you're now arrived at the point where you have to begin to prepare for re-entry.

You're powering up the module.

Jack Swigert's in the command module and powering up.

What was that like for you to see this thing that you'd switched off, not knowing if it would ever switch on again, come back to life, the command module?

Well, I was quite worried knowing what the problems were.

And well, the first thing I was worried about was could we get the computer up and running again.

Fortunately, that little computer worked fine, and we were able to get using using the stars to

realign the gyros to make sure that they would tell the spacecraft exactly the attitude with respect to the celestial sphere.

And that really worked out.

So that was a sort of a half point for me.

If we could get that going, so that would tell us just where we were with respect to coming back in, and in case we still had to make other maneuvers.

And so you've aligned your guidance platform.

I guess things are beginning to look up.

You then have to part company with the lunar module, Aquarius, the ship that has looked after you for the last four days.

Tell me a bit about that and what your feelings were as you cast this off into space.

Yeah, of course, this is before we entered the atmosphere, but it was just about time.

And we finally

got everything square away.

We brought all our gear back into the command module.

Fred took some netting that we had that was sort of protecting the electronic stuff over on his side.

I took the optical sight out of my side, back in as a souvenir.

And then we came through, closed the hatch,

got ready to go, and then we could see, of course, the lunar module through our windows.

And Jack jettisoned the lunar module, and of course,

I think it was

Dr.

Hayes,

I think Hayes had said that farewell, Aquarius.

We thank you.

I mean,

do you recall that as being a big moment for you as well?

It clearly was a big moment for Fred Hayes, but this is your lifeboat.

This is the reason that you've got this far and you're parting company with it.

It was a big moment for me, mainly because

there was also theories about can you use a lunar module to get back home in case something happened,

but it had never been thoroughly investigated.

So the lunar module proved itself.

And I remember reading just before you jettisoned the lunar module, you noticed that Jack Swiger had put a little note on one of the switches to make sure he didn't eject you by accident.

Well, that's right because we spent a lot of time in that lunar module and all you had to do was push the switch while we were in there taking pictures or something like that.

And that would have been the end of the ball game.

And

also the end for him too because the hatch was open.

So I mean, you know,

oxygen would go for both sides.

So you've got the command module on its own now, ready to enter the atmosphere.

Just talk me through what that experience was like as you re-entered.

Well, we all got a position.

Jack was the command module pilot, and he was on the left side.

But really, there was not much we could do now.

As a matter of fact, because we had powered up the computer and the guidance system, system, it now knew where we were and it knew where we were supposed to go.

And therefore, all we had to do was wait to see how this thing would start to build up.

And then, of course, as we got into the very high end of the atmosphere, we could still feel in our bodies that we were slowing down.

Now, it wasn't exactly, you know, 1G yet, but just basically, but then it sort of build up and build up and build up.

And, of course, I told my two companions what to expect since I had been there before.

And we did that.

And then of course you could see the flames come in, part of the heat shields being ejected, bits glowing as it went out.

Well essentially what happened,

when we came back in for the final part, it was like if we had, there was no problems.

The whole thing seemed to whirl around, that everything was working like it should have worked automatically, had nothing to happen to this flight at all.

And then famously, the entry took longer than expected.

Were you aware of that in the capsule?

Oh, yeah, we intentionally made it longer than

expected because we knew that this was going to be a good film.

And so we thought, well, if we're here this far, why not?

Now, seriously,

it was

longer than expected expected because we actually, in this two-degree pie-shaped wedge, we were at the lower end of the two-degree pie-shaped wedge, which made for a longer re-entry.

We were coming in shallow because we weren't perfect with our navigation coming back, and that's what happened.

And you're sitting in your couch there, you come through.

When are you aware that the chutes have deployed properly?

Well, I'm looking at the clock and looking at the altitude, especially the altitude that that told us when the drug should go out.

And sure enough, at the proper time, at the altitude, those drugs came out.

And those are the drogue chutes, the small parachutes that pull the bigger parachutes out.

That's right.

They're small parachutes, but they do two things.

They sort of stabilize the spacecraft coming down so it doesn't swing way back and forth.

Then also at the proper altitude,

they deploy.

Well, they help deploy, actually, the parachutes are shot out.

That's why we needed the power to do that.

And they would come out, and the two drogues would then pull the three big main parachutes out.

And just describe to me what that's like from your perspective, rearward facing, looking through a small window.

Do you see them deploy?

Oh, we saw the mains.

And what they did, they come out and they're still ruffled.

They're so designed not to quickly come out in case they got broken at the speed.

And so then as they unleashed or slowly unwung themselves,

then they would blossom out.

And of course, when all three came out very nicely,

obviously the crew was very, very happy.

Were there any exclamations in the cabin at that point?

I suppose so.

I don't recall.

I just had my eyes glued to the window.

I was just watching those three beautiful parachutes blossom out.

And then, of course, splashdown.

Tell me about that.

Well, we had a little time on the mains coming down, and I said, now, gentlemen,

this can be kind of rough.

I mean,

and it was on Apollo 8.

Between the swinging of the capsule and the wave action, we actually came down

on the edge.

So I told them that be prepared for a pretty rough landing.

But the landing was great.

The landing happened to be just right.

The waves were just right, and the spacecraft just plopped in the water, and there we were.

And I've also been curious about what you're aware of as the recovery team comes to get you.

Can you hear the helicopter coming in?

Are you aware of the divers swimming up to your capsule before they open the hatch?

Not too much, no.

No,

after we were on the water and we were safe and we

knew that this was the end and we were successful, what we started to do was to figure out what should we take in with us, getting the spacecraft prepared to be recovered and what we should take in our suits or something like that before we go when the helicopter picks us up.

And then of course

the swimmers would come up and they put a rubber thing around the spacecraft to make sure it wouldn't sink.

And then they opened up the hatch.

So they knocked on the window, and that was quite very nice.

And they opened up a hatch, and we got the fresh air, and they got the dirty old smell there.

They came on.

And do you remember that moment?

Because

I imagine that must be quite a moment after so much drama, so much hazards, the hatch coming open, and you breathing fresh air and having sunlight on your face for the first time.

Yeah,

it was a very nice feeling, really, now that we were back on the water.

And of course, we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so I mean, thank God that the guidance system worried that we weren't 300 miles to the west or to the east or something like that, where it would take us some time for somebody to come pick us up.

But we slowly ejected.

I was worried about Fred Hayes.

I wanted him to make sure he got.

So when we got outside along the,

and there was a

rubber boat there, too, that helped us.

I got Fred on the helicopter first,

and then I got Jack second.

And then, you know,

the commanders of sinking ships are always the last to leave.

You know,

and I was bound to determine I was going to be the last guy to leave this thing.

And so I was.

I was the last guy to go.

Thank you so much, Jim.

It's lovely to talk to you.

Thank you.

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