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A tale of 2 captains
By Tim Wood
In December of 1968, U.S. Navy Captain Jim Lovell was orbiting the moon. Captain Lloyd Bucher was a prisoner of the North Koreans.
Both were in Maury County within the span of a week. Lovell spoke at the Saturn Homecoming on July 31, while Bucher spoke to the Columbia Breakfast Rotary Club on Friday.
Both are American heroes.
Lovell is known for commanding the Apollo 13 mission, in which he and his two crewmates managed to return to Earth safely after their spacecraft was crippled by an explosion en route to the Moon. Had he never flown that mission, he still would be noted for the Apollo 8 mission.
In December of 1968, Lovell, mission commander Frank Borman and crewmate William Anders embarked on the boldest and riskiest mission of the space program. Originally, their mission was to orbit the Earth and do further testing of the Apollo command module, which had been re-designed after a disastrous fire killed three astronauts during a launch pad test.
But NASA, concerned by reports that the Soviet Union might try to send a man around the moon, took the bold step of making Apollo 8 a lunar orbital flight. The crew would orbit, but not land on the moon.
It would be the first time that a manned crew was put on top of the Saturn V moon rocket - described by Lovell as "five and one-half million pounds of high explosives." The Saturn V had undergone fewer flight tests than any other new rocket.
The mission did not carry a Lunar Module. Had Apollo 8 suffered the same explosion as Apollo 13, there would have been no "lifeboat" to get them home safely, and they would have died in space.
However, the mission was a success. The tumultuous year of 1968 was ended with the three crewmen reading scripture passages from Genesis while orbiting the moon, and they brought back one of the greatest pictures of the century - the Earth rising over the lunar surface.
Bucher was the captain of an intelligence-gathering ship. He and his crew were captured by the North Koreans in a raid on the high seas. One crewman was killed in the attack.
The Pueblo was vulnerable because it was not given adequate intelligence information and military support. Or, as Bucher said, "They forgot about us."
The young crew of the Pueblo endured a hellish 11 months of torture and captivity until the U.S. signed a "confession" to get them back.
The U.S. never retaliated against North Korea. Military forces were in the area and available, but were not ordered to assist the ship. The Pueblo lost voice communication in the first part of the attack.
In 1968, the U.S. was in turmoil. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. There were riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Vietnam War was dividing the nation.
But in that tumultuous year, two Navy captains were doing their duty to their country. Lovell was a warrior in the space race, helping the U.S. fulfill President John F. Kennedy's call to land a man on the moon. Bucher was gathering intelligence to help keep the peace.
Both of those captains came to Maury County last week - and both of them are heroes.
Published Aug. 8, 1999 in The Columbia Daily Herald
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