TH UR SDA Y , M A Y 12 , 2 016
COUNTY WIDE YOUR HOME AND FAMILY NEWS FROM ALL OF KENDALL COUNTY
KendallCountyNow.com
SPLASH
DOWN! Yorkville Navy veteran recalls recovery of Gemini 8 capsule 50 years later By MATT SCHURY • mschury@kendallcountynow.com
I
magine you’re a 20-year-old radio operator for the Navy during the 1960s, stationed on a small base in the Pacific Ocean, and a call comes over the wire that an object will be tumbling down from space near the base you are stationed at and you need to tell your commanding officers about it immediately. That’s exactly what happened to Jon Thom of Yorkville 50 years ago this spring when on March 17, 1966, the Gemini 8 space capsule was recovered with the help of his unit after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott were quickly plucked from the small spacecraft and Thom, a radio operator at the time, was one of the first to know about it. While he never met Armstrong or Scott, he did hurry to the port where they were taken after falling to earth and got a first-hand look at the Gemini capsule. Even five decades later, Thom speaks about the midmorning day in March as if he is still that 20-year-old Navy radioman third class. “March 17, St. Patrick’s Day – that’s when it came out of the sky and tumbled down and they were all worried that they were going to lose the astronauts, but they pulled it off and it was just a wonderful thing,” Thom recalls. “A message came and they said ‘Oh my gosh, you better get ready for some excitement because Gemini 8 is aborting and it’s on its way down now.’” NASA’s website describes the Gemini 8 mission as the sixth crewed Earth-orbiting spacecraft of the Gemini series, carrying astronauts Armstrong and Scott. According to NASA, the Gemini 8’s mission objectives were “to perform rendezvous and four docking tests with the Agena target vehicle and to execute an ExtraVehicular
See SPLASHDOWN, page 4
Photo provided by Jon Thom
Navy Radioman Third Class Jon Thom of Yorkville checks the exterior of the Gemini 8 capsule in March 1966.
“
“It came through us, through the radio-shack and we thought we can’t let this message sit for one second, we got to get it to the commander here – to the captain – and we did. The guys that went out and got them off the tin can in the destroyer went in the water and got them, and it was really a marvelous recovery.” Jon Thom Navy veteran from Yorkville