The Brave Men of Apollo

THE three men who weathered Apollo 13's crisis-ridden journey formed one of the more oddly matched crews of the space age. Apollo's skipper had a military background and was a veteran of three space flights, including a trip to the moon. His two crewmen were civilians and space novices, one a serious-minded parent, the other a swinging bachelor who joined the crew at the last moment to replace an astronaut threatened by German measles. Yet when disaster seemed imminent, the crew became a well-coordinated team, acting in concert to save their spacecraft--and their lives.

JAMES A. LOVELL JR., 42, captain, U.S.N., Apollo's commander, had his eye on the stars ever since, as a teen-ager in Milwaukee, he frightened his neighbors by firing a homemade rocket 80 feet into the air. Entering Annapolis in 1948, he was allowed only one elective course, a language. He chose German and then used his newly acquired linguistic skill to read the writings of a little-known scientist, Wernher von Braun. Convinced of the coming importance of rocketry, he accurately predicted many current space-flight advances--much to the amusement of his Naval Academy roommate, who teased him, "Lovell, some day you're going to the moon." A skilled test pilot who helped develop the weapon system for the F-4H Phantom II jet fighter, Lovell suffered the greatest disappointment of his career when NASA failed to name him as one of its original Mercury astronauts in 1959. But he was chosen in the second batch in 1962, and he has since logged more hours in space (670, including the 143-hr, flight of Apollo 13) than any other mortal. Lovell was one of the Apollo 8 astronauts who orbited the moon at Christmas in 1968, and he backed up Neil Armstrong for Apollo 11's historic moon landing. "I watched his every step," he recalled after the flight.

Marilyn Lovell, enthusiastic about her husband's first flight to the moon, first resisted but then accepted with nervous stoicism the idea of another lunar trip. Against Jim Lovell's advice, she recently went to see the film Marooned, which deals with a trio of astronauts stranded in space, and came home shaken. She had good reason to be: in the film, the flight commander dies. Nonetheless, she managed to maintain firm control over her emotions throughout Apollo 13's flight. "I'm used to it now," she said of the danger of space flight. "If I had fears, I couldn't live a normal life. Everyone must have a goal, and this is his." Even before Apollo 13's problems, Lovell had promised his wife and four children that this would be his last flight. "If it weren't," he said, in a reference to other astronauts awaiting space assignment, "I think I would find about 50 knife wounds in my back." But last week he failed to achieve his goal of walking on the moon and may well request to fly still another mission. Beyond that, Lovell says that he plans to stay on with NASA. Some friends, however, believe that his good looks and winning ways might eventually launch him into a new orbit--that of a politician in his home state, Wisconsin.

FRED W. HAISE JR., 36, lunar-module pilot, might have been a member of the press corps covering the flight of Apollo 13 if not for the draft. A native of Biloxi, Miss., he studied journalism at Perkinston Junior College, a two-year school, and looked forward to a writing career. Instead, faced with induction, he enlisted as a naval aviation cadet. "Like most kids at that age, you kind of jump into things before you really think about it," he said. Whatever his original thoughts, he quickly became hooked on flying. After 2 1/2years as a Marine pilot, he went back to school, flying with the Air National Guard while he earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, he went to work for NASA. But even before he ventured into space, he had compiled an impressive record for conventional flight in the atmosphere--about 6,000 hours.

Trim and compact (5 ft. 9 1/2 in.), the easygoing Haise is married to his high school girl friend, Mary Grant. The match seems ideal. Haise is a devoted family man. Mary is totally immersed in astronaut life and needs little help in translating the exotic technical language her husband and his fellow space travelers speak. The Raises have three children, and Mary's icy calm throughout her ordeal was all the more remarkable for the fact that she is expecting her fourth (which the family hopes will be a girl) in June.

JOHN L. SWIGERT JR., 38, command-module pilot, has very little in common with the man he replaced beyond the fact that both are bachelors. Ken Mattingly is serious and studious. Swigert is a not-so-secret swinger with the reputation of having a girl in every (air) port. Swigert's favorite ploy, his friends say, is to invite girls to his apartment to see what he claims are his moon rocks. For all his bachelor antics, however, Swigert is a highly skilled former Air Force flyer and civilian test pilot with degrees in mechanical engineering, aerospace science and business administration. The son of a Denver ophthalmologist, he is a former University of Colorado guard, and one of the biggest of the astronauts (5 ft. 11 1/2 in., 197 Ibs.).

Swigert is no stranger to in-flight emergencies. Once, while flying with the Air Force in Korea, he landed his plane in a driving squall, crashed into a road grader someone had left on the runway and walked away unscratched from the blaze that demolished his aircraft. Another time, as he was landing at Buckley Air Field near Denver, his brakes failed and his plane slammed into the base's arresting cables, but he escaped unhurt. Although he was a last-minute replacement on Apollo 13's star-crossed trip, Swigert showed great skill in improvising new emergency procedures after the explosion crippled the Odyssey. But then he should have. He helped develop the original emergency procedures for the command module's instruction manual.

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