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Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes

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In Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes, author Billy Watkins delivers 14 fascinating stories of little known people from the Apollo program. For those of us who read a lot about Apollo, this book adds some well-needed alternative views of the program. I've read most of the astronaut biographies and many of the histories of Apollo-after a while I'm looking for some nook or cranny of information that I did not know already.

The chapters in Apollo Moon Missions are similar to the wonderful 12 page riff in Stages to Saturn about the Super Guppy aircraft that was used to transport the Saturn S-IVB stage. In Stages to Saturn, this story is told partly by profiling flamboyant entrepreneur John M. Conroy and his company Aero Spacelines that built the Super Guppy. I like this kind of story because it personalizes the Apollo program. The accounts in Apollo Moon Missions of people like Sonny Morea, the lead designer of the Lunar Rover, Julian Scheer, the NASA publicist who got TV cameras onto Apollo 11, and Joe Schmitt, suit technician, who was often the last person the astronauts saw before the hatch was closed on the launch pad are fun and unusual.

The Apollo program that took Americans to the Moon in the latter 1960s and early 1970s literally involved a cast of thousands. At the height of Apollo NASA's civil servants numbered 36,000 people and its contractor workforce had 376,700. One estimate of the people associated with the program was one of twenty in the United States, when counting all aspects of the Moon landing program. That is a lot of unsung heroes. The astronauts who went there acknowledged as much, always remembering to thank the thousands of unnamed people who made it possible for them to journey to the lunar surface and return safely to Earth.

Billy Watkins seeks in this book to recount the story of a few individuals who made it possible to reach the Moon. He profiles fourteen different people who worked in the program in some manner. They include Bruce McCandless, an astronaut who did not get to fly on the program; public affairs official par excellence Julian Scheer; launch controller Joann Morgan; Navy frogman Clancy Hatteberg; mission control engineer Gerry Griffin, and others. These profiles are just a few of the thousands that could be offered about people who ensured the success of the Apollo program. They rescue from obscurity the contributions of these unique and unsung heroes.

Billy Watkins's book is celebration of the devotion of those who worked on the Apollo program. It is a welcome reminder of a single-minded devotion to duty. Our thanks are due to all those who took America to the Moon. This book helps to spotlight some of their stories.

This was the first book I read about the space program and it will be one I read again. It was a great read in itself, but it also motivated me to learn more about the Apollo missions (and read Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon"). I was one of those young teens glued to the TV the summer of the moon landing. How little I understood of the human effort and significance of what I was seeing! Watkins' book helped fill in the blanks. Highly recommended.

Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes really is a gem for anyone interested in NASA or the Apollo flights. There have been countless books written on this period in history, but Watkins does something unique. Instead of trying to tell the whole story of the program or trying to write the biography of an astronaut, Watkins chose to tell the stories of a few people involved in the Apollo program - photographers, engineers, even the wife of one of the astronauts.

As astronaut Fred Haise (of Apollo 13 fame) says in the introduction of this book, countless people toiled away in order to make sure the country fulfilled Kennedy's dream of landing a man on the moon before 1970. At its height, there were 400,000 people working on the Apollo program - that is a huge number for the 1960's. Watkins had quite a job in picking just 14 of them, but he picked well. All the stories are intriguing and it is gratifying to read about the contribution each of them made. The book is also very easy to read. The words flow smoothly and it's a short book.

The question is, if you haven't read much about NASA or Apollo, can you understand this book? Definitely. Watkins gives the reader enough information to be able to understand the background of each of the narratives. The people who will really enjoy Apollo Moon Missions: The Unsung Heroes, though, are those who have read and savored the countless books on Apollo. Watkins provides a new look at this inspiring period in history. It's really not to be missed.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5

There's something about the whole Apollo project that makes you wonder, when you really consider it, whether we peaked in 1969.

This would be a terrific addition to your space collection. It tells the stories of a variety of people who were instrumental in going to the moon, but, until now, have been overlooked. It helps to give you a fuller picture of the space program in the moon shot days. I also recommend Carrying the Fire by Mike Collins (my favorite book by an astronaut) and Flight by Chris Craft.

It might be appropriate that nearly 35 years later after the last Apollo mission (1972) names like Armstrong, Aldrin, and Lovell immediately conjour up images of the first moonlanding and the near tragic mishap of Apollo 13, thanks to Ron Howard. But if it weren't for people like Bales, McCandless, Underwood and Hatleberg - and the countless scores like them - the American public might not have even remembered the men that flew on the Apollo missions in the first place.

Watkins has done a great service to space history specifically, and this cultural experiment we call late 20th century America, by giving us fourteen glimpses into the lives of the unsung heroes behind the Apollo mission. One could only wish we had access to many more of the stories of people like Joseph Laitin, Joe Schmidt and Rodney Rose.

Knowing what the average person does about the Apollo heroes (i.e., the astronauts) gives one a foundation to appreciate what the Apollo missions accomplished and what they meant to our country. But knowing the contributions of the behind-the-scenes support people, like the ones profiled in this book, will make your understanding and appreciation of the Apollo missions go from analog to high-def plasma in 186 short pages.

Today in Space History (www.todayinspacehistory.com) gives it high marks and a must-read.

"The Unsung Heroes" is an easy read. Fourteen chapters of fourteen different people behind the scenes. From the "frogman" who was the first person to see the Apollo 11 crew after splashdown to the wife of an Apollo 14 astronaut, Billy Watkins covers a variety of backgrounds. Each 10-15 page chapter is a story unto itself, allowing a person to read a chapter at a sitting without being in suspense until the next time you pick up the book.

When you think there isn't anything more to write about Apollo and the whole moon program, this book shows how much more there might be. I don't know how Watkins was able to cut down the list to 14 but the ones selected sure show how many people there were working behind the scenes so that a few could walk on the moon. A really good read, I highly recommend it!

For someone who has been interested in the Apollo program as long as I can remember, this book stands alone because of the way it reflects the behind-the-scenes achievements of 14 individuals lucky enough to have worked on the Apollo program. I was captured from the moment I started reading Fred Haise's Forward and thoroughly enjoyed every chapter as learnt a lot of new and interesting facts, both technical and personal. Also, the respect for the loss of the Apollo 1 crew within the Apollo workforce is most evident.
A fascinating read!