How Navy & Marines Reached the Moon 50 Years Ago

Glenn and Armstrong, survival training in Panama, 1963. NASA

Review by Bill Doughty

July 20, 1969: A Sailor (Neil Armstrong) became the first human to step on the moon. 

Earlier in the decade, another Sailor (Alan Shepard) was the first American to travel in space, and a Marine (John Glenn) was the first American to orbit Earth.

A United States president and vice president (both Navy veterans) along with a NASA administrator (a former Marine) provided key leadership so Americans could plant the American flag in the Sea of Tranquility fifty years ago this month.

That flag – once red, white and blue – is now bleached white by UV radiation, according to Douglas Brinkley in "American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race" (HarperCollins, 2019).

From War/Destruction to Peace/Discovery

Writing with a journalist/historian's touch, Brinkley shows how the influence of World War II – and the resultant Cold War – brought about the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was a race that the Soviets proved to dominate – hare to tortoise – in the early 1960s.

"Space was America's Cold War Manifest Destiny," Brinkley writes, "and the Mercury astronauts wore its rough-and-ready trailblazers, following in the footsteps of Kennedy's own World War II Generation and almost two centuries of American adventurers before."

America's moonshot would not have happened in 1969 without JFK's drive.

John F. Kennedy, who had some health issues even as a young man, was at first rejected from service, but he used his father's influence to help him get into the Navy. 

"When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 – 'a date that will live in infamy,' as President Roosevelt termed it – Jack and Joe Kennedy were already in uniform and ready for combat duty. They would never have to scrub off the taint of using their father's influence to avoid military service. Four days after Pearl Harbor, Nazi Germany and the Axis partners declared war on the United States. 'Industrial Mobilization' became an urgent catchphrase across the nation. Military bases were built on empty land. Factories were adapted to switch from manufacturing consumer goods to producing war matériel. Between 1940 and 1943, enlistment in the U.S. 
Armed Forces expanded from fewer than five hundred thousand to more than nine million. Mobilization efforts swelled in every direction, from far-flung Honolulu to the shipyards of Norfolk."

A young JFK.

JFK showed his profile in courage in the War in the Pacific, and was profoundly affected when his big brother, Joseph Jr., was killed on a combat mission. Joe's plane exploded in mid-air in what proved to be an unsuccessful bombing mission against a Nazi missile base.

Brinkley posits that Hitler's missile program laid the foundation for NASA's success, particularly with the help of former Nazi scientist Wernher von Braun. Kennedy was motivated and propelled by a combination of influences, including his father's drive, his brother's death, and a vision of the future for America and the world.

JFK, followed by LBJ and assisted by NASA administrator James Webb, a Marine major in WWII, presented the vision, the mission and the will to reach the Moon, despite other challenges and sea changes in the 60s – including the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights movement and Vietnam.

JFK's visionary leadership, combined with the hard work and creative innovation of an elite civilian-military team, the United States discovered a world of innovation in space, including communication, mapping and global positioning satellites; commercial air transport; and the microchip.

Navy veterans/leaders kept space closed to militarization and turned away from nuclear atmospheric testing and proposals to put nuclear weapons in space.

In Kennedy's challenge to go to the Moon, he said – with speechwriter Ted Sorensen's help in balancing optimism with humility – "we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and unforgettable ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds."

Naval Propulsion Into Space

While the sea services were joined by the Army and Air Force and led by civilians in developing the space program, Brinkley reveals various naval ties – Navy and Marine Corps connections – to putting Americans into space:

CNO Adm. Arleigh Burke joins JFK and LBJ to observe the successful mission by Alan Shepard.

• Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal mentored Navy veteran-turned-politician JFK on "post-war national security imperatives," preparing him for his next roles in public service.
• On May 5, 1961 Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke was with JFK and LBJ to observe news coverage Alan Shepard's successful flight into space.
• NASA Administrator James Webb was a major in the Marine Corps in WWII, tasked with running the U.S. radar system for the planned invasion of Japan, ultimately unnecessary after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Imperial Japan's surrender.
• The Naval Research Laboratory announced Sputnik's successful orbit of the Earth on Oct. 4, 1957.
• The Navy led development of the Vanguard satellite, which experienced fits and starts (though former Nazi Wernher von Braun, supported by Senator Barry Goldwater, favored the Army's satellite hardware and development – as well as militarization of space).
• Among the hundreds of U.S. Navy ships involved in the recovery of astronauts and development of the space program were USS Lake Champlain (CV-39), USS Decatur (DD-936), USS Intrepid (CV-11), USS Kearsarge (LHA-3), USS Noa (DD-841) and USS Randolph (CV-15). Navy helos, divers, tracking and personnel were also critical to the success of the program. (Check out the extensive list of recovery ships on NASA's history site.)
• Lt. Cmdr. Victor Prather, a Navy flight surgeon, lost his life testing the full-pressure Mark IV space suit. Other military veterans as well as civilians paid the ultimate price over the years as the space program developed.
• Shepard was a  Navy test pilot and "military aviation superstar" who had served aboard USS Cogswell (DD-651) during WWII and as a squadron operations officer aboard USS Orinsky (CV-34) during the Korean War. He was a leader among astronauts and became the oldest man to walk on the moon, at the age of 47.
• Naval aviator Neil Armstrong "had become one of the most respected jet pilots of the Korean War generation, part of an 'ace club' that also included John Glenn and Wally Schirra."
• Marine John Glenn distinguished himself in World War II and the Korean War. He became a close friend of both President Kennedy and younger brother Robert F. Kennedy. Glenn represented all astronauts at JFK's funeral. After leaving NASA he entered further public service, running for the United States Senate. Jacqueline Kennedy called on Glenn and asked him to comfort her children Caroline and John Jr.  after JFK was killed. Glenn would do the same for RFK's children in 1968 after Bobby Kennedy was murdered.
• Astronaut Scott Carpenter, a Navy test pilot who followed John Glenn into space, had served in the Korean War, flying "numerous reconnaissance and antisubmarine missions along both the Siberian and Chinese coasts."
• Astronaut Wally Schirra served aboard Navy cruiser USS Alaska (CB-1) during WWII. After the war he married the stepdaughter of Adm. James L. Holloway, Jr. (father of a future CNO).
• A big supporter of the Navy in Congress – U.S. Senator John C. Stennis (D-Mississippi) is quoted: "Whoever controls space controls the world." is the namesake for the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74).
• SECNAV Fred North, along with LBJ and SECDEF Robert McNamara, accompanied President Kennedy for a visit to Houston, Sept. 11-12, 1962.
• Although patriarchy and prejudice prevented qualified women (along with non-Christians and non-whites) from becoming astronauts in the early 60s, the Naval School of Aviation Medicine began testing women – seasoned pilots. Dr. William "Randy" Lovelace II, an aeromedical pioneer, "believed that women were better equipped psychologically for NASA space travel because they were, on average, shorter and smaller than men, needed less food and oxygen, and had better blood circulation and fewer cardiac problems." Unfortunately, when NASA and Congress learned about the initiative, the program was shut down, postponing and delaying fulfillment of the promise of equality.

President Kennedy visits Cape Canaveral Nov. 16, 1963.

Cape Kennedy, Vindications, Revelations

Shortly before JFK was killed in Dallas, Texas, he visited Cape Canaveral, Florida, Nov. 16, 1963. "The president's visit to Cape Canaveral had reinforced his faith in exactly what a gargantuan, well-funded, centralized government project could achieve in breakneck time."

Navy, led by USS Wasp (CV-18), recovers Gemini 9 capsule.

Within a week of Kennedy's assassination, LBJ proclaimed a new name for Cape Canaveral: Cape Kennedy.

Interestingly, Brinkley shows how Kennedy was wrong about his claim of a big missile gap with the Soviets, something he proclaimed in what would today be called "fake news." Kennedy made that claim in pointed attacks against President Eisenhower in the late 1950s.

In some ways Ike was vindicated by what Kennedy learned when he came into office (and what was then reported in the New York Times). Eisenhower had quietly kept pace in space in the 50s, deploying reconnaissance and missile-detection satellites.

"All JFK's taunts at Ike had been overdrawn. The fact were that when Eisenhower left the White House, the United States had one hundred sixty operational ICBMs to a paltry four R-7s in the Soviet arsenal. Kennedy now gladly accepted this reality. Later in 1961, Corona satellite intelligence indicated that Khrushchev, expectations aside, had only six ICBMs. Kennedy and Johnson's campaign swipes that Eisenhower and Nixon were the architects of a national security missile strategy of 'drift, delay, and dilution' had clearly been off base. Furthermore, America's three coastal launch sites (Cape Canaveral, Florida; Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; and Wallops Island, Virginia) were already operating around the clock to further spaceflight advancement. Each of these sites had technical facilities, a control center, and the most modern of launchpads. What Kennedy learned was that Eisenhower had actually done an able job of building up U.S. defenses. When Ike was inaugurated for his first term in 1953, the air force still used piston-driven bombers, and navy strategy focused on basing ships around the Pacific. By the time he handed the reins over to JFK, the United States had developed reconnaissance and communication satellite capabilities. And there were nuclear submarines – including the USS George Washington (SSBN-598) – deployed the very month Kennedy was elected and able to carry sixteen nuclear Polaris missiles. Five generations of rockets – starting with the early Vanguard, and then onward with ICBMs like Atlas and Titan – were born in the Eisenhower years. The army had teams designing heavy-launch Saturn rockets, while the air force, not to be outdone, had made headwind with its Space Launching System (SLS), experimenting with a myriad of launch configurations using solid-fuel boosters and hydrogen/oxygen upper states. The Strategic Air Command had more than fifteen hundred jet bombers capable of dropping hydrogen bombs on America's enemies."

Still, JFK was passionate about winning the Space Race for "global prestige" as he fought for peaceful exploration rather than exploitation – for discovery instead of dominance. Already in the 60s there were overtures of joint collaborative missions with the Soviets. But, "For Kennedy, much depended on the United States going to the moon, beating the Soviet Union, being first, winning the Cold War in the name of democracy and freedom, and planting the American Flag on the lunar surface."


Today, as we learned, that flag from 1969 is bleached white. But, rather than being a flag of surrender to the new frontier, perhaps it's a blank slate that could represent a renewable spirit of cooperation and collaboration, reflected in the words of a naval aviator: "one giant leap for mankind."

The American flag planted on the surface of the moon.

Bonus – The U.S. Navy recovers John Glenn: