From Fighter Pilot to the Youngest Man to Walk on the Moon | Apollo 16 | Charlie Duke

then it really hit me I'm on the moon I'm on the moon and the excitement the Wonder The Thrill The Adventure of it all and it's Buzz all to described it it was this magnificent desolation and you kept thinking nobody's ever been here before my footstep is the first time it's been a footstep in that spot and so that never that wander never left you are about from the great crusade to meet didn't make no mistake good will prevail half a million people work to make possible the Apollo missions to the Moon the program proved one of the great achievements in human history among the legends of Apollo is Brigadier General Charlie Duke an air force test pilot turned NASA astronaut Charlie Duke was the Capcom for Apollo 11's epic First Landing he was the first person to talk to the crew on its surface we copy you down Eagle you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue we're breathing again thanks a lot three years later he made his own footprint on the moon landing with Apollo 16. he is one of only 12 men to walk on its surface a special thank you to our patrons whose support allowed us to film General Duke's story support our mission to preserve our American history at patreon.com American Veterans Center now here is General Duke on his Epic Journey from the Earth to the Moon I was born in Charlotte North Carolina but mostly raised in um South Carolina uh uh this is all during World War II so we moved to count my dad joined the Navy and we moved to California for a couple of years and he went overseas we moved back to South Carolina and then when he came back we went to Florida for a year and then back to South Carolina so growing up in in World War II My Heroes were all the military guys and since my dad had been in the Navy I said well I want to go to the Naval Academy so I didn't even know you could fly airplanes from the Naval Academy but when I went but I went off to school a prep school annual Farragut Academy in St Petersburg Florida to get prepared to get into the Naval Academy and uh it was a good move for me I learned how to March salute obey regulations live on my own at 15 started at 15 and make my bed and all that stuff so I got to the Naval Academy and I felt right at home and uh then I realized you could go uh they gave me some airplane rides at the Navy Naval Academy and that did it I said airplanes have a lot more appeal to me than ships so back then there wasn't an Air Force Academy and this was in the mid 50s and so they would allow West pointers and midshipmen to volunteer for the U.S Air Force up to 25 percent of the glass and so uh I uh had a choice to make it was should I be a Naval aviator or an Air Force Aviator and the decision was made by a doctor at the Naval Academy during my senior year he told me I said Mitchell maduke you have astigmatism in your right eye and you don't qualify for Naval Aviation but the Air Force will take him so I went to flight school and this was in the summer of 1957. uh was flying t-34s and then t28s and then I went to Advanced and not Advanced and went to basic training and uh that was uh a t-33 uh first jet that was in in Flight Training and then from there I went to Advanced Training f-86 uh the Interceptor models and so it was an Interceptor pilot came out as an Interceptor pilot tell me a little bit about serving in Germany around the time of the Berlin Wall going up what kind of missions and uh we were setting alert by this time we had f-102s I was in a 526 fighter Interceptor Squadron and I got to Germany in uh summer May of 1959. it was also the that was the beginning of NASA and also the beginning of uh astronauts and Sputnik went up when I was in flight school and uh changed the whole Dynamics of the Cold War and uh so I enjoyed being in Germany it was a great experience we had a lot of exciting scrambles to intercept things along to Czechoslovakian border and East Germany and so it was a it was a good assignment I really loved it I got finished in Germany in 1962 was my third year and I felt like I ought to go to graduate school so I applied uh to graduate school through uh uh Air Force Institute technology and they sent me to MIT and my second year there I had a feast I had to do a thesis well NASA let me start with me mit had to contract to build the Apollo guidance and navigation system so they needed two pilots to help out on this system and that was my thesis and so as a I was working on this program I met a lot of astronauts came up to visit to see what this thing was going to look like this guidance and navigation system and I'd never met anybody who was so gung-ho about their job and excited about their job and I asked them uh Charlie Bassett I was killed shortly after that but uh in an airplane crash but uh Charlie said I said Charlie how do I get this job uh he said you got to finish your degree and go to test pilot school and you might have a chance so I followed their device advice and uh so when I graduated in his summer of 1965. uh yeah no 1964. I got selected as test pilot school and and started out in test pilot school in Edwards Air Force Base and the next year I graduated and went to went on staff at the test pilot school and I was in July of 65 and uh then in September NASA had another call for astronauts and it was my chance so I I volunteered and was selected it started in 1966. and you were part of the crew for Apollo 16 but you were also indelibly linked to Apollo 11 because of your role as capsule Communicator Capcom yeah short so explain what that role is first of all well uh still today uh Capcom is the only um the only person in Mission Control who can actually talk to the crew uh in flight and so it's always an answer I I I'm not sure now but then it was always an astronaut and uh that gave you a familiarity we all knew one another gave you a familiarity uh and you and you could talk in their Lang pilot language if you will and you relayed the information that was generated in Mission Control a go no go and monitor this system that system whatever and then you've transmitted that up to this crew and they would respond and so you had a conversation with the crew and everybody else in Mission Control was listening in and Advising the flight director on their systems and so you basically were the voice of Mission Control and it was a very important job you had to you had to say it right and you had to say it in Pilot language if you will and um and they they really depended on you transmitting the information that was correct uh and no mistakes and uh so I I did that on Apollo 10 which first time we took the lunar module to the Moon but no landing and two months later uh We've Apollo 11 we landed and uh since I'd done that on Apollo 10 Neil Armstrong invited me to come do it on Apollo 11. just to keep that whole team together uh we just moved from 10 to 11. and we were well trained and except for the Landing part we had done it all and uh so it was a so tense it was dead silence it nobody I mean if if you weren't transmitting the the information within the room everybody was monitoring on their their system and we'd had a series of problems uh on The Descent at first we had communication problems and the mission rules was if you lose Communications for 30 seconds you're abort the mission so we were reorienting the spacecraft to the dis different antennas then we got a computer overloads which was really I thought very serious without the computer you cannot land and so we were having these computer overloads uh but the computer Engineers were saying we'll go on these uh on these alarms flight and then when it we got to 7 000 feet above the Moon the lunar module pitches down so the windows are now pointing at the lunar surface and Neil apparently looked out the winner and says we can't land here we had him targeted into the wrong place so he levels off at about 500 feet and he flies several miles horizontally across the Moon then pitches back up to start this far he picked out a landing spot stop his forward the velocity and then lower the lunar module now well that five miles at 500 feet or whatever it was used up all our reserves and the fuel so now we got on minimum Fuel and uh uh we had a margin of four percent when we got to four percent in decent engine uh we were going to abort so uh the propulsion engineer said flight 60 seconds that mean he had 60 seconds to get on the lane on the ground so I said Eagle 60 seconds and uh then I said Eagle 30 seconds and uh he wasn't on the ground but court according to my stopwatch it was 13 seconds later I heard Buzz Alder and say contact engine stop and the tension was through the roof in Mission Control in fact the tension in my in me was higher in Mission Control than it was when I landed on the moon on Apollo 16. so it was very close what was the atmosphere and Mission Control once you knew there was a successful Landing uh we all erupted is like punching a balloon the all the tension left and we were clapping and sharing and uh then didn't last long because Gene Krantz the flight director said get back to work you guys make sure this thing is safe and we can stay so we had a series of stays if you will T1 T2 T3 as it went on down and we made sure that the lunar module was nothing leaking nothing broke all of those things so we finally got down to uh okay for the final stay and we were okay for the for the rest of the 24 hours on the moon well let's talk about Apollo 16 now first of all for most of us who will never know what it's like describe blast off oh uh okay uh liftoff and a Saturn uh five was a tremendous experience it wasn't uh loud the fire the the sound went sideways not up to the spacecraft and we were up on the top of a 360 foot tall vehicle and uh the only thing I can remember was a vibration you got four engines there's five engines at the bottom pushing with seven and a half million pounds of thrust and the four on the circumference they wiggle to control the trajectory and that wiggling down there comes through this aluminum structure shaking like sideways taking you sideways from side to side and we're strapped in real tight and uh but you you can feel the vibration and if you look at it it was a high a high frequency not as high as space shuttle but really high frequency and it was a good amplitude and uh to be honest I got a little nervous I didn't remember people telling me it was supposed to shake this hard uh but uh so I uh I I was holding on and uh and John Young was saying we'd go he'd flown the Saturn before and we'll go and Mission Control says you go and for the first two minutes and 30 No 41 seconds was first stage on our flight it that vibration never stopped and uh it was always the same but not uh Nani Pogo but just side to side and that's really the only thing I remember from uh from the ascent was that vibration on the first stage and about three and a half minutes I have to lift off we're now in the second stage they jettisoned the cover over the windows and you can see outside for the first time and that was spectacular there's the Atlantic Ocean and in deep blue and then the blue of the atmosphere that Fades into the white and then at the top of the window was the Blackness of space it was uh life transforming really it was incredible and the g-level wasn't so bad and uh I found out later that my excitement on liftoff was 144 beats per second my heart as I was really I was really ready to go and John Young his was 70 so he was the cool one on the flight uh but that's the only thing I can remember is just the vibration we talked about the the drama of the the orbit and the landing on Apollo 11. you had your own challenges in lunar orbit that threatened the potential Landing what was the problem and how did you resolve it well it the problem occurred about an hour before we were scheduled to land we were on the back side of the moon out of contact with Earth and the Command Module we run an orbit that was 60 miles on the backside and seven miles on the front side so that we have the best landing chance well he had to change his Orbit on the backside to 60 mile circle uh so he'd be in the right position when we if we had to abort on decent well he couldn't the main engine was out and not the ignition of the main engine but the control of the main engine and uh when he reported this uh John Young made a decision uh don't burn and when he said that we weren't going to land on the next Rev well I mean if you your heart can sink to the bottom of your boots and zero gravity hours did and uh so we now the landing's no go so we come around the back and Mission Control they were shocked and uh and uh we were down and uh so John told they dumped all the data down and said well we'll look at it well we went around the backside came around again and now we're uh coming around to be four hours behind schedule and the Moon is slowly rotating out from under us uh and so if we get a go we got to go over fly cross range well they didn't right before we uh uh just let's see I guess it was uh on they they said we're working on it so we disappeared around the back and came around the front and they said uh we can't fix it but we know what's wrong and this is your work around so they gave Ken a uh a procedure and he said your goal for a burn on the next Rail and then right before we went uh a a loss of signal they said you're going for landing and boy did our hearts Eureka you know I mean I can't explode explain the excitement we got and uh so we would go for landing it was the last rev uh that we could uh make our Landing site so six hours behind schedule we started our descent Mattingly's burn went well uh and um so we didn't worry about that problem anymore and we started down and made a successful Landing probably within 200 yards of where we intended the land so John did a great job there had to be points where you're just stopping for a moment thinking I am on the moon well that happened right away after we landed you know we were I'm on the moon I'm on the moon and uh you couldn't you couldn't uh could hardly believe it because we were six hours late now we're here and man the lunar module is working great and we're going to spend 72 hours on the surface and uh so we were very excited about it and uh but they changed the flight plan on us and so instead of going outside for the first Excursion we took off our suits and they said go to sleep for eight hours well that was a little hard you know four out of five hours after you landed on the moon somebody says go to sleep well uh that didn't work very well but we I finally got about four hours sleep after taking a sleeping pill and Nick uh so we got out and uh and that then it really hit me I'm on the moon I'm on the moon and the excitement the Wonder the thrill the uh Adventure uh of it all and it's Buzz all to describe it it was this magnificent desolation and you kept thinking nobody's ever been here before my first that my footstep is the first time it's been a footstep in that spot and so that never that wander never left uh everywhere you went you saw something different you saw uh detail these the photographs that we had studied of our Landing site only had resolution to 45 feet so objects less than 45 feet you couldn't see in these photographs but when you got there you could see little tiny Pebbles and so there were a lot of craters there were a lot of Boulders there were a lot of things like that scattered around our Landing site that we didn't even know were there and it was a lot more rolling and rougher train because the car was bouncing through these little craters and over these little rocks and stuff like that so it it was uh a three days of wonder if you will and excitement what were the main priorities of this Mission well the Apollo 16 uh was the second of the J missions the first first three Landings on the moon were a 24-hour maximum stay on the lunar surface but they wanted to do more science they wanted to do more exploration so they extended the stay of the lunar module to three days on the lunar surface so they gave us a car and uh other experiments so we were the first and only turned out only uh mission to land in the lunar Highlands and if you look at where Neil Armstrong landed versus where we landed it was eight or nine thousand feet altitude difference so the idea was these these rocks are going to be different than what they found on Omari and sure enough they were but they weren't what they expected they expected two kind of volcanic rocks but there was hardly any volcanic rocks up there on the moon in that area so all the experiments uh all of the the use of the car we were the second with the car was designed to understand what the lunar Highlands was composed of and so we worked very hard to uh to get the right samples and to deploy all the experiments that we were to to do and uh and everything worked well except for one experiment we the heat flow experiment uh which required me to drill two holes into the moon and but the electrical system was out so we abandoned that that uh that experiment that was but that was the only failure we had so it was a very scientific exploration of the lunar Highlands was the whole quote big objective of Apollo 16. you know that every little kid watched you guys drive around the moon in those Moon cars and wanted to be you right yeah well John drove he had to really focus on the area ahead of him I was the Navigator and uh travel guide if you will goes without a without a as you bounce across the moon driving the antennas going like this so you don't have any TV and uh so I'm describing these what we're seeing so well on your right Houston uh in every 50 meters I'd take a picture and I see this there and I see that and so I'm navigating for John and he's taking my instructions and getting us down to point a or a plum crater or whatever we were going to and uh so I I just kept talking it was fascinating to rain that we were going by and I wanted them to understand uh just from the pictures and for what I was describing uh you tend to overestimate the number of rocks on the surface you know you were saying 40 percent but you look back later and you count the rocks and it wasn't nearly that high but I mean that's the excitement that comes in at uh in the enthusiasm and the uh extravagance I guess I left two objects onto the moon that were uh personal and uh 1972 was the 25th anniversary of the United States Air Force it was formed in 1947. I was the only astronaut Air Force officer going to the Moon that year so I had this idea let's say happy birthday Air Force or happy anniversary and uh so uh I got in contact with the Pentagon in some way I don't remember how I did it but anyway the Air Force said that's a good idea so they minted two special coins about the size of a silver dollar that commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Air Force and I left one on the moon I dropped one on the moon and took a picture of that and the other one I brought back is now on display at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Ohio and the other was a a an idea that I had to include my family and uh we trout we trained in Florida but we families all lived in Houston so we were gone a lot so to get my kids excited about what dad was doing I said boys y'all want to go to the Moon with me yeah Dad that'd be great and so uh I said well of course you can't really join me on the spacecraft but let's take a picture of our family so I had a little snapshot of my family and got permission to take it and leave it on the moon and so the last thing I did was to take this picture out of my pocket and drop it on the moon and took a picture of the picture and it's still there it's all burnt up now after 50 something years the temperature on the moon when I dropped that picture was probably a hundred and probably about 200 degrees Fahrenheit so it was getting hot on the moon the higher the sun gets the hotter the surface gets and you can't feel that in your spacesuit but you can see the effect of it when you drop a plastic picture and it starts to curl up almost instantly um so those are the two things I did and then we ended up uh with the uh Moon Olympics uh we decided to do the moon Olympics and uh and we're going to do the high jump and then we're going to do the broad jump and uh down here with all my equipment on I weighed 363 pounds Up On The Moon 60 pounds and so I was in shape then and I could start bouncing and John was bouncing so when I bounce and I said here we go and I straightened up well the secret center of gravity went backwards and over I went backwards and that life supports if I hit on that life support system and it breaks I'm dead like that so do something and I had the thought roll right so I roll right and I broke my fall on my right side and my right hand and right leg and my heart I landed on my back and so there's the Earth out there and I'm up flat on my back and Jonathan runs over says that wasn't very smart Charlie and I said help me up John and and but I'm still alive and I I had a pressure gauge uh and it said normal we had a remote control unit up here on our suit and the oxygen supplies everything was normal so he helped me up and uh and I but my heart was pounding I tell you and uh so at uh then I looked up and a TV Camera was looking right at me and uh Mission Control had seen this stupid stunt and uh so that ended the moon Olympics I have to say they were very upset and uh so we got back inside John parked the car and we got back inside two hours later we left when you look back at Your Role throughout the Apollo program but also just the opportunity to be on the moon what are you most proud of there are two uh I think two uh events one was the course landing on the moon Ben honored being one of 12 that walked on the moon that has to be the the tops of my Apollo career but the second was uh uh helping land lunar module uh 11 uh Neil Armstrong Apollo 11 on the moon with Buzz Aldrin that was a great thrill a great honor for me

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Length: 30min 1sec (1801 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 18 2023