Faces of Freedom ~ John Wolfram & Clancy Hatleberg

SEALs in the water and on the capsule

Apollo 11 capsule at Splashdown on July 24, 1969
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins aboard raft with
Navy SEAL Lt Clancy Hatleberg - contamination officer

In the comments of my post on the Apollo 11, a commenter, "Anonymous" left a message:

Hate to nit pick, but those are Air Force Pararescuemen (they support NASA operations) recovering the astronauts at splash down, not Navy SEALs.

Since I took my description from NASA, I was prone to believe NASA rather than the "ever credible" Anonymous (sarcasm off). But, I did research it.

The Apollo 11 capsule was retrieved by members of the Underwater Demolition Team 11 - Navy SEALs off of the USS Hornet. One of the men who secured the Apollo 11 capsule was John Wolfram, a Navy SEAL, who also served two tours in Vietnam. In the above picture, you see the astronauts and Navy SEAL Lt Clancy Hatleberg in their contamination suits, while the flotation of the capsule has been secured by the other Navy SEALs, including John Wolfram. To read the entire story of the recovery, go here - the USS Hornet's page (the ship that retreived the capsule). I'm sorry I don't know the names of the others on the team.

Here is an interview with John Wolfram:

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/entertainment/good_day/Ex_Navy_Seal_First_to_Greet_Apollo_11_072009

sorry, I could not get it to embed...

And, here is his new book, which covers his SEAL training, time in VietNam and the Apollo mission.



John Wolfram is now a minister and does much of his ministry work in VietNam.
You can visit him at: http://johnwolfram.org/

Thank you, Anonymous, I learned a lot researching this.

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Continuing to find information about the Navy SEALs in this operation.
Add in Greg McParltin, who also wrote a book, Combat Corpsman