USS Hornet (CV-12) 27 March 1967. She reached Japan exactly a month later and departed the Sasebo base on 19 May for the war zone. She operated in Vietnamese waters throughout the first half of 1967. "Hornet" recovered the astronauts from the first moon landing mission, Apollo 11, on 24 July 1969. President Nixon was on board to welcome the returning astronauts back to Earth, where they lived in quarantine aboard "Hornet" prior to transfer to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Houston. The first steps on Earth of returning moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, are marked
The Leslie Cantwell Collection image to life thus making it more meaningful to the viewer.” Cantwell made countless trips back and forth across the Atlantic, travelling extensively throughout the United States to meet and converse with the Apollo astronauts, with many of whom he developed a special rapport that would enable him to understand the “men behind the mission”. Amazingly, he was able to persuade all but one of the twelve men who set foot on the moon to inscribe the images, including Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Gene Cernan, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt, amongst others. Only Neil Armstrong refused (for years he has