USS New enters the Space Age

Since Man first ventured out upon the oceans he has been looking to the stars for guidance. Even after centuries of studying the heavens  man was still curious about the vast endless system of stars and is destined one day to travel them. This is about the early years of space flight and exploration, experimentation by brave men who risked the unknown to bring that dream a little closer. A few US Navy ships were involved in those early years waiting to pick up the capsule as they plopped into the sea on their return to earth. New was involved in both the Gemini and Apollo recoveries.

These images are not in any chronilogical order.

Quarterdeck links page

there is so much more to be added

I have sent you some pictures of the USS NEW Apollo XI & XIII recovery task force. Both Apollo XI & XIII we were sent to Cape Kennedy about a week ahead of launch to practice picking up the capsule and crew  incase of a launch or mission abort. The day of the lunar landing the envelopes shown were canceled by crew members, myself included. People from all over sent in self addressed stamped envelopes to be canceled on these historic days. We had hundreds of envelopes to cancel on these days .We didn�t have much else to do anyways because we had to stay on station until the   missions were complete. It is still exciting to think you were a small part of these historic events. We were in Houston Tx last year visiting friends and their grandson was studying Apollo XI and they had to interview three people to see if they could remember what they were doing when man first walked on the moon. He got an interview that no other of his class got when he interviewed me. It was to bad I didn�t have these things with me then.                                                  Donald Smith STG3 (Smitty)

Other memorabilia like this canbe found on the Memorabilia page

These pictures show New and the Newboat working to get a position on the practice capsule. Destroyers practiced day after day to pick them up but the carriers such as Yorktown and Intrepid came in and took all the glory. One such splashdown the astranaughts had to wait an hour for the carrier to come in so their helos could pick them up. Meanwhile it is bobbing around and he men inside are rather sea sick. All the while a DD is there ready at anytime to pluck them to safety. I should add that this was done n deep ocean waters and if the capsule had sprung a leak or somehow been damaged they would have sunk to the bottom like a rock and would have surly perished. Fortunately that never happened. .