Neil Armstrong parachute was blown back over land. A jeep driven by a roommate from flight school picked him up; it is unknown what happened to the wreckage of his aircraft, F9F-2 BuNo "125122". In all, Armstrong flew 78 missions over Korea for a total of 121 hours in the air, a third of them in January 1952, with the final mission on March 5, 1952. Of 492 U.S. Navy personnel killed in the Korean War, 27 of them were from the "Essex" on this war cruise. Armstrong received the Air Medal for 20 combat missions, two gold stars for the next
Neil Armstrong to the explosion. Cortright's report recommended the entire tank be redesigned at a cost of $40 million. Many NASA managers, including Armstrong, opposed the recommendation, since only the thermostat switch had caused the problem. They lost the argument and the tanks were redesigned. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan asked Armstrong to join the Rogers Commission investigating the destruction of the Space Shuttle "Challenger". Armstrong was made vice chairman of the commission, and held private interviews with contacts he had developed over the years to help determine the cause of the disaster. He helped limit the committee's recommendations to nine, believing