ALAMEDA — The USS Hornet was on hand 40 years ago to pick up the Apollo 11 astronauts after their Columbia Command Module splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969.

Today, the aircraft carrier is preserved as a museum in Alameda, California. Its main deck is littered with historic warplanes and space artifacts including an Apollo command module and Mobile Quarantine Facility from subsequent missions, pictured below. The first footsteps the Apollo 11 crew took on Earth after walking on the moon are traced on the deck.

Wired.com recently took a tour from the flight deck to the bowels of this 19-story ship. This gallery contains two or three scenes per page of the coolest corners, cables and controls from our visit to this impressive, history-filled vessel.

One of the reasons the USS Hornet was saved rather than scrapped is because it recovered the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, which is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The Apollo capsule currently kept on the Hornet, pictured here, is nearly identical to the one that returned Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins safely to Earth.

This capsule was also recovered by the Hornet, after it was launched into space unmanned and used to test the heat shield’s strength for landing. The capsule held up so well, NASA decided to put it to a tougher test by dropping it on land. That exercise resulted in an impressively small dent.

The Apollo 11 crew spent five days in a Mobile Quarantine Facility, like the one pictured here (an Airstream trailer), as the Hornet transported them to Hawaii. The unit was then lifted by a crane into a plane and flown to Houston where it was hooked up to a larger living space at Johnson Space Center.

“It was the first time we went to the moon, so there was a whole quarantine issue,” said museum curator Pete Sutherland. “They thought, maybe there were germs up there that could wipe out all life on earth.”

The Apollo 11 MQF is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, but this one on the USS Hornet is the only one of the four built that visitors are allowed to step inside. This one was used by the Apollo 14 crew.

“The NASA scientists were looking for something that would fit for all their particular parameters they needed for it to work, and it just turned out that Airstream had something that was pretty much already there,” Sutherland said.

Richard Nixon famously welcomed the astronauts back from outside the MQF on the USS Hornet.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: The USS Hornet‘s Crisis Information Center is pictured. While engaged in active warfare, crewmembers would stand behind transparent, hanging boards and write information backwards to keep from getting in the way of the officers who needed to read it.



Below: The captain’s chair looks out over the flight deck. The Hornet was commissioned in 1943 and saw combat in World War II and Vietnam before decommissioning in 1970.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: The USS Hornet‘s crane plucked the capsule from the ocean, after the astronauts were safely removed.

Below: A photograph shows Hornet quartermasters on “high alert” while waiting for the splashdown, which occurred in the early morning.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: The aircraft carrier has four huge cables used to catch the tail hooks of landing planes to slow them down. The cables are controlled by arresting-gear engines, which could be adjusted for the calculated weight of each plane plus its load.

If the resistance was too hard, the tail hook could snap off; too soft, and the plane would keep going. The engine pictured here was actually for the safety net that would catch planes if all else failed.

There are several Peanuts characters painted on the USS Hornet, including Linus and his security blanket. The message reads, “I’m here for security.” Curators of the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, California recently visited the Hornet to photograph the murals. Some of the paintings are X-rated, however, and won’t be included in the exhibit.

Below: A warning painted in big bright letters on the flight deck reminded the crew what to avoid. The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world to work.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: Chairs are stacked neatly in the Hornet‘s main mess hall.

Below: The kitchen is still used to cater events on the vessel.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: One of the Hornet‘s four engine shafts, capable of 150,000 horsepower each. The ship could reach speeds of 33 knots, or 38 miles per hour.

Below: Another view of the shaft room, which is on the sixth of the Hornet‘s 19 levels, just under the engine room.

The bottom photo shows one of the ship’s gyro compasses, which used the Earth’s rotation to find true North.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: A diagram of the shipboard steam cycle.

Below: The engine revolutions indicator allowed for precise maneuvers by regulating how fast each engine was turning.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: Various phones, intercoms and radios are scattered everywhere around the ship to help the crew communicate on the 872-foot long vessel.

Below: This meter displayed the speed of the enormous catapult used to launch planes off the carrier.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: The Hornet’s 19 floors feel at times like an inescapable labyrinth that could easily swallow a wandering visitor.

Below: This emergency diesel generator provided electricity to the ship when its engines weren’t running and dockside power wasn’t available.

The bottom photo shows a circular hatch designed to let people escape an area in the case of fire or flood, and then close it very quickly behind them to keep the hazard from spreading.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Above: “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

Below: A chance for visitors to “try on” an Apollo space suit.

See Also:

July 24, 1950: Launching Cape Canaveral



Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com