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Splashdown!

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Abstract

It was April 1961 and 20-year-old Air Controlman 3/c (Third Class) Ed Killian from Texas had been serving aboard the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39) for eighteen months. During that time “The Champ” – as she was fondly known to her crewmembers – had mostly been engaged in an anti-submarine patrol rotation out of NAS Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Towards the end of the month the ship finished a three-week sweep northeast of Norfolk, Virginia, and her exhausted crew were eagerly anticipating some shore leave.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The “island” of a carrier includes the command center for flight deck operations, captain’s bridge, admiral’s bridge, and the navigation, meteorology and signal bridges.

  2. 2.

    Shepard and his fellow astronauts were later awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor that was authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1969. Shepard received his from President Jimmy Carter in 1978.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bonnet Bay, New South Wales, Australia

    Colin Burgess

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  1. Colin Burgess
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Burgess, C. (2014). Splashdown!. In: Freedom 7. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01156-1_6

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