The BBC coverage of the re-entry and splashdown of Apollo 13. Commentators in the studio include Cliff Michelmore, James Burke, Geoffery Pardoe and Patrick Moore. This programme was broadcast April 17th 1970.
One of my earliest memories was being woken up by my parents when I was 6 to watch the Apollo 11 moonwalk. I was fascinated by Apollo and still am and i remember Apollo 13 vividly - strangely, one of the things I remember so well was a cartoon in a British newspaper - it was probably The Mirror or The Sun - but I'll never forget the cartoon. It showed the Apollo 13 spacecraft returning from the moon - and in the background there's these ghosts of Columbus, Magellan, Cook, etc - the great explorers - the cartoon caption was "Come on boys, we're all pulling for you"
The Dunkirk of spaceflight. Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat by professionals with skills so good they were virtually superhuman. thanks for uploading this. Loved it!
I remember aged 9 running home from school (Hathershaw Juniors in Oldham) to see if they got home. My mum and I watched this very programme and cried with joy when we heard the astronauts after re-entry. I remember running up and down the stairs because of joy and relief and thumping the air.
Nice to see this after watching the movie. Note in the movie, In the film, Lovell has a cameo as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima, the naval vessel which led the operation to recover the Apollo 13 astronauts after their successful splashdown. Lovell can be seen as the naval officer shaking Hanks' hand, as Hanks speaks in voice-over, in the scene in which the astronauts come aboard the Iwo Jima.
Great to hear the commentary from the voice of a then-young James Burke. His groundbreaking science documentary entitled ‘Connections’ should be a part of every secondary school curriculum.
The tension on their faces is quite evident with even crossed fingers on display. The relief when that capsule with parachutes deployed became visible must have been exhilirating after all the dramatic moments since the explosion 3 days earler with one problem after another cropping up in the struggle to bring these men back alive.
My father actually observed the technical data of the early Apollo missions as part of his job. He once told me that there were so many mechanical issues on those space flights it is remarkable accidents like Apollo 13 and Apollo 1 were not the norm.
I was too young to remember Apollo 13 (Apollo 15 - 17 were the only moon missions I remember clearly), however my mother says the bit of the BBC Apollo 13 re-entry coverage she remembers clearly was James Burke with his fingers crossed. This footage shows it clearly. Thanks for posting it.
The story of this incredible rescue mission gets to me every time. Everyone of the crew and mission control are heroes but Commander Lovell is my all time Hero
Totally love the fact that they didn't fill in any of the Dead air time with chatter just quiet contemplation. Today's so-called news reporters could take lessons!!
Thank you SO much for posting this footage. I can vividly remember sitting at home with my family (I think it must have been school holidays) watching this; the image of James Burke with his fingers crossed. The tension of not knowing if they had survived re-entry or if the heat shield had been damaged by the explosion. I know radio blackout was only a few seconds longer than expected, but at that time every second felt like an hour. On a slightly different note, compare the clothes the BBC team are wearing here to those from the clip a few days before when James Burke was talking about what the crew would need to do to get home; then it was light grey suit and psychedelic tie; here dark suits and sombre ties. Whether a conscious/unconscious decision from each of them or an edict from the BBC, they were prepared to give the worst news if things had gone wrong.
RIP Cliff Michelmore. We watched this live on the school's only TV, I've always wondered how our teachers would have explained it to a class of 8 year-olds had it all gone wrong.
over the last 2 weeks, i watched this video over and over, i was just over 2 years old when the apollo 13 disaster occured.... now i see why more and more everyday the Brits are our closeness ally...u guys rock...the great vid...
that was a jim lovell responding. the most touching scene. i searched stuff about the appolo 13 over internet 5, 6 years ago. i never find this. thanks for uploading this.
I never paid attention to the US space program until the Challenger tragedy so I watched the movie not knowing the ending... Ron Howard did a great job.
Nice to see this footage in its entirety again. BBC usually show it edited down quite a bit. BBC started broadcasting colour TV in 1967 but right through to the mid 1970s they still broadcasted the odd B & W programme.
I know a guy that was in the navy back in the day and was on the aircraft carrier that picked up Apollo 11. He was standing just a few feet away when the astronauts got out of the capsule... I'm really jealous :)
@penguinsix There was Cliff Mitchemore journalist (opening the clip), James Burke, a science expert, Patrick Moore who is an amateur astronomer and is now aged 87 and still presents The Sky at Night which has been airing on the first sunday of the month for 53 years, plus some other experts
Lovell tightened his straps, the other two mimicked. "Hold on, if this is going to be anything like Apollo 8 this could be rough." said Lovell, But it was nothing like Apollo 8 as Apollo 13's command module sliced smoothly into the South Pacific Ocean.
I was in 7th grade at the time and skipped school that Friday so I could watch live coverage of this event (which began around 5:30 AM where I lived). My teachers gladly accepted my excuse for missing school.
My dad wrote the excuse note for me and stated I was watching history in the making. I think that was the main selling point in getting my teachers to gladly accept my excuse.
@lunarmodule5 The last time I saw this we were all sat round the old black & white tv (still did not have a colour set). Where did you find this? It looked like it has been kept on an ancient VHS hence the poor quality. Thanks for uploading, brings back happy memories of those heady times when it seemed the whole world held its breath.
Not sure what was going through ron howard's head when he chose to go with altering the sequence of events of how apollo 13 came out of reentry. The drama could have focused on whether or not the chutes would deploy or not. That's when it seemed to be the moment when the collective sigh of relief actually occurred and it would have been just as good if not better. Ah well. P.S. respect to the british broadcaster's coverage here, skillfully done play by play commentary
@pt1gard My guess is that the uploader got hold of an ancient VHS tape which would have deteriorated over the years and has not converted to digital all that well. I watched this at the time and the quality was quite good even by todays standards. But the quality here is not that important, the uploader is showing a bit of history as it happened, not entering into some silly hoax debate.
they're lucky the explosion from the CSM didn't damage the heat shield. after all they were coming in at 24000mph. how bad of shape was 13 in? what were the chances of the parachutes not deploying?
+derek wall Their velocity was about right for a lunar mission. The fastest re-entry capsule ever was actually Apollo 10, 36,360 feet per second or about 40,000 km/h. The Apollo command module was designed to land safely on just two of its three parachutes. They also "skipped" to a higher altitude and re-entered a second time in order to spread out the thermal load. The re-entry was one of the few things on Apollo 13 that went by the book. :P
China HAS built something. They got several Taikonauts in space and a small space station. UK has invented highly efficient rocket engines that may make SSTOs possible, and Japan has done a lot of stuff as well. Capsules are better than space planes for a simple reason: First rule of Engineering: Keep it simple.
The camera seems to temporarily pan away from the CM as the main chutes are streaming. Was this to avoid exposing the TV public to the doomsday scenario of an unsurviveable impact with the Pacific had all 3 `mains` failed due to damage?
Ever stuck your hand out of a car window doing 70 on a highway? It gets blown back quite a bit dosn't it. Now imagine doing that at 25000 mph - thats how hard the capsule is decelerated (5 x gravity at its peak). The CM hits the air so hard it gets turned into plasma (which is what causes the radio blackout). Obviously that kind of speed would snap a parachute right off. So they don't even get deployed untill the capsule has slowed to a few hundred mph.
Now imagine trying to land a glider that’s still traveling over 200mph when you touch down, coming in over twice as steep as a commercial jet,and there were no go arounds. The shuttle went very fast but not quite as fast as a returning moon ship. Still, the plasma was what doomed Columbia
For sure I don't want this for nobody, but I still doubt that next spaceships generation will perform that well in emergency cases as Apollo did. And I feel that perform is there in this case thanks to Grissom, White and Chaffee.
Doubt it, Quality will not be HD or anything like that as UK TV at the time were either 405 line monochome or 625 line 50 Hz PAL 25 FPS Colour format. Video Capture of 625 line film (which is also interlaced) only gives a quite small resolution image (smaller than 400 x 300 pixels). Enlargement will lead to Webcam type quality. Plus the original footage from the US navy recovery forces were filmed in NTSC 60Hz 29 FPS format which would have had to be processed through an analogue scan converter before it could be shown on UK TV.
Horrible audio & video. You would think that even in 1970, the technology existed that would have done justice to this very important event. Almost like this event took place in the mid-30's. For Christ's sake, the Hindenburg disaster had better audio/video.
Try the Apollo 11 video for quality ( not that the original exists anymore) & I don't mean the still photos. The video is the worst quality imagery I've ever seen. Only the fist experimental photography in the 1830s & 40s would be worse. I've seen still photos from the 1860s & moving film from the 1890s ( before there were even motor cars on the city streets) that's far better quality than what NASA saw fit for mankinds giant leap ( Not that you see any giant leaps on the Moon)
Lovell tightened his straps, the other two mimicked. "Hold on, if this is going to be anything like Apollo 8 this could be rough." said Lovell, But it was nothing like Apollo 8 as Apollo 13's command module sliced smoothly into the South Pacific Ocean.
