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 and various flags and medals flown on his space missions. A series of auctions was held on November 1 to 3, 2018, that realized $5,276,320. Two fragments of wood from the propeller and four pieces of fabric from the wing from the 1903 "Wright Flyer" that Armstrong took to the moon fetched between $112,500 and $275,000 each. In a 2010 "Space Foundation" survey, Armstrong was ranked as the #1 most popular space hero; and in 2013, "Flying" magazine ranked him #1 on its list of 51 Heroes of Aviation. The press often asked Armstrong for his views on the future