June 26, 1955. Bill and Valerie Anders on their wedding day at the Naval Chapel, San Diego. Credit: Anders
Today she remembers this time with wistful good humor. “I was so young.” Each night they went to another formal dance, dressed to the nines. Valerie wore crinoline skirts with long leather gloves--”much like Scarlet O’Hara.” On the night of the Ring Dance Valerie wore Bill’s class ring on a blue ribbon around her neck. At the center of the dance floor was the huge replica of the ring.
Throughout the evening Bill and Valerie danced. Finally the last shreds of hesitancy faded, and Valerie knew that the time was right. They drifted through the ring, and she took his ring from the ribbon around her neck and placed it on his finger.
He took from his pocket a small box, and from it removed a miniature ring with a single small diamond surrounded by a cluster of smaller diamonds. He placed it on her finger, they looked at each other for one long silent moment, and then kissed.
Valerie had finally said yes.
* * *
Three years later. Valerie was in San Diego with one-year-old Alan and one- month-old Glenn, while Bill was an interceptor pilot stationed in Iceland.
He pulled up to his cruising altitude of 30,000 feet and headed southwest. For almost a year Anders had been patrolling the skies above Iceland, intercepting any unidentified aircraft that drifted into radar range. Most of the time they turned out to be commercial passenger jets flying slightly off course. During the winter, when the Iceland night lasted almost twenty-four hours, he would take off into a sparkling sky, the Northern Lights shimmering ghostlike above the horizon. The ground radar station would guide him to the plane, and his radar operator would shine a searchlight on its tail in order to read its number.
Now it was summertime, and the sun was bright and the sky clear blue. According to radar, the unidentified blip was coming from the northeast. Only Soviet military planes came from this direction, skirting Norway by flying over the Arctic Ocean. Anders turned due east in order to intercept the intruder before it reached Iceland.
Until he got close enough to actually see it, Anders had no idea what he was facing. If this blip heralded the beginning of a full-scale Soviet military attack, he would be fighting for his life. If it was a commercial jet he dared not misidentify it and shoot it down by mistake.
And if it was a merely a Soviet bomber on a routine mission, he would have to firmly escort it on its way, while simultaneously avoiding an international incident.
Ground radar guided Anders towards the intruder. When he was within twenty miles his radar operator picked it up on the F-89’s own radar, and vectored the plane in from the side. Soon a speck appeared. The two planes were now less than 1,000 yards apart, and Anders could see that it was a Soviet bomber. Gingerly he swung around so that he was approaching it from the side. He had to make it clear to the other plane who he was and what his weaponry represented. He also had to make it clear that he would only attack if threatened. He knew that they had their guns trained on him as well.
Very carefully he eased up alongside, mere yards apart. Slowly he worked his way forward so that he was parallel with the Soviet plane’s cockpit. He stared at the pilot and co-pilot, who stared back in turn. From what Anders could see, the Soviet bomber was alone and did not appear to be hostile.
For a few minutes the two planes flew in formation together as they headed west and out into the Atlantic. Then Anders noticed that his fuel was getting low, and asked his base for new instructions. Knowing that the Soviet bomber was clear of NATO airspace, ground control directed him to break off, and he headed back to Iceland.
Before he did, Anders grinned at the Soviet crewmen and gave them the finger in farewell. The Soviets smiled back and held up a sign in English which read “We screwed your sister!”
Another day in the Cold War had ended.
KHRUSHCHEV
On July 24, 1959, Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard Nixon stood before an exhibit of an American kitchen in Moscow and, with news reporters and dignitaries crowded around, argued the merits of communism and capitalism. Khrushchev, a blunt undiplomatic man who never minced his words, looked at the display of ordinary American home appliances and scoffed, “I was born in the Soviet Union, so I have a right to a house. In America if you don’t have a dollar -- you have the right to choose between sleeping in a house or on the pavement.”
Nixon responded, “To us, diversity, the right to choose, the fact that we have 1,000 builders building 1,000 different houses, is the most important thing . . . We do not wish to have decisions made at the top by government officials.”42
Khrushchev looked Nixon in the eye and laughed. “We have existed not quite forty-two years,” he said, waving an arm at the American exhibit. “In another seven years we will be on the same level as America. When we catch up with you, in passing you by, we will wave to you.”43
In the decade since Frank Borman had visited Berlin, the Cold War had only intensified, the Soviet Union emerging from World War II as an aggressive challenger to the Western World. And epitomizing that challenge was Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party and Premier of the Soviet Union.
Born in 1894, Khrushchev was a small, blustery man with a round face and round body. His father had been a poor man, struggling to survive first as a railroad worker, then as a farmer, and finally as a coal miner. When Nikita was thirteen he joined his father in the mines, apprenticing as a blacksmith.44
When the communists seized power in 1917 he quickly joined the revolution. Though his knowledge of communist and Marxist ideas was somewhat simplistic, “slogan-Marxism” as it were, he accepted its goals fully and with passion.45 By the early 1920’s he was fighting in the civil war against the White Russians. Soon after he was placed in charge of one of the very mines he had worked in years before. He subsequently rose swiftly through the party’s ranks. In ten years he became a major political player under Stalin, surviving the purges of the late 1930’s and instigating a few of his own when he was placed in charge of the Ukraine in 1938.46 By 1953 he became head of the Soviet Communist party, and took full power in 1958.
Like many of his fellow communists, Khrushchev was never afraid to speak his mind about his faith in communism and his desire to see it dominate the world.47 In November 1956 while attending a diplomatic reception in the Polish Embassy in Moscow, Khrushchev so eagerly proclaimed this faith that the envoys from a dozen Western countries walked out. “Whether you like it or not,” he told them, “history is on our side. We will bury you!”48
Khrushchev believed that all power began with the state, and by doling out that power as the state deemed best a better society could be created.49 “Centralization was the best and most efficient system,” he wrote in his memoirs. “[Everything] had to be worked out at the top and supervised from above.”50 Such supervision included not only all economic activity and property rights but also all philosophical, religious, and intellectual thought. The Western concept of liberty of conscience, where all citizens are free to choose their own religion or express their own personal beliefs, was alien to Khrushchev. Even when he allowed a “thaw,” an easing of political oppression after the death of Stalin, Khrushchev placed limits on freedom.
We were afraid the thaw might unleash a flood, which we wouldn’t be able to control and which could drown us, [washing] away all the barriers and retaining walls of our society. . . . We wanted to guide the progress of the thaw so that it would stimulate only those creative forces which would contribute to the strengthening of socialism.51
Though dissidents and political opponents were no longer executed, many careers were still destroyed. Some were imprisoned, or exiled from the country. Books were banned, newspapers censored. And nothing could be published without government approval.52
Where religion was concerned, Khrushchev did not even allow a thaw. He saw religious expression as an evil that had to be stamped out. Soon after Khrushchev took p
ower, a 1959 Pravda editorial stated that “religion is inimicable [sic] to the interests of the working masses . . . [hindering] the active struggle of the people for the transformation of society.”53 For the human race to rise to the new level, party workers had to strive for the “complete eradication of religious prejudices.”54
These words signaled the beginning of an anti-religious campaign that in five years eliminated more than 10,000 churches in the Soviet Union, almost half of the entire country’s places of worship. The property of believers was confiscated, priests arrested, and churches bulldozed, all in the name of atheism and rational thought.55
Khrushchev’s faith in communism and the government’s ability to guide society was also reflected in his unwillingness to tolerate political opposition. In 1953, soon after the death of Stalin, the East German government attempted to collectivize the country’s farmers. The result was a revolt, nationwide strikes, and the sacking of the Communist Party offices in almost every major city. To regain control, the Soviet army rolled into Germany, killing more than eight hundred people and re-establishing a sympathetic Communist government.56 As Khrushchev remembered, “Throngs of people went out into the streets. We were forced to move tanks into Berlin.”57
In 1956, more than 200,000 people marched through the capitol of Hungary, demanding elections and an end to the Soviet occupation of their country. Khrushchev responded by sending the Soviet army into Budapest to smash the rebellion. “Once a movement like this gets started, the leadership loses the ability to influence the masses,” he explained in his memoirs. The leaders of the Hungarian government were arrested and executed. A new government, loyal to the goals of the worldwide communist revolution as well as to the Soviet Union, was installed.58
Khrushchev’s faith in communism did not manifest itself only in oppressive actions. He truly wanted to improve his nation, and made enormous sincere efforts to do so. As tough and as hard-willed as he was, Khrushchev also dreamed big and almost childlike dreams.
There will come a time when our descendants, studying the heroic history of our deeds, will say: ‘They did a great thing.’ The people will wonder at how the workers of semi-literate Russia heading the working class went out to storm capitalism.59
Under his tempestuous leadership, the Soviet Union emerged from its borders to pose a powerful and real challenge to the West. In January 1958 Khrushchev’s government agreed to the first extensive cultural exchange program with the United States, the climax of which would be two competing exhibits, one in New York City and the other in Moscow, both mounted in the summer of 1959.
The Soviet exhibit in New York City occupied the entire three floors of the Coliseum on 59th Street and Eighth Avenue. It included a full-scale three room apartment, a fashion show, Soviet-built cars, an electron telescope, a combination television and chess board, and numerous displays of technology, art, and culture. The exhibit extolled the glorious achievements of the communist way of life, as well as the hopes the Soviet leadership held for its people, its nation, and its philosophy.60
One Soviet triumph in particular seemed to prove Khrushchev’s boasts. In the main entrance hall hung models of the four successful Soviet satellites, Sputniks 1, 2, and 3, and Luna 1. Sputnik 1 practically unhinged the American social order when it became the first artificial satellite on October 4, 1957. For three weeks it emitted regular beeps at standard shortwave frequencies as it circled the globe. Not only had America been beaten into space, Sputnik weighed six times more than the first American satellite, launched four months later.
Where space exploration was concerned, Nikita Khrushchev did more than just make fiery speeches. Khrushchev aggressively pushed Soviet engineers to design larger rockets, not just to build nuclear intercontinental missiles, but to embark on an ambitious space program that would bring communism to the stars. “People of the whole world are pointing to this satellite,” Khrushchev said of that first Sputnik launch. “They are saying the United States has been beaten.”61
Less than a month after Sputnik 1, the Soviets triumphed again with Sputnik 2, now five times heavier. More stunning to the American public, however, was that the capsule contained a dog named Laika, the first living creature to enter outer space. For about a week the world could hear Laika’s heartbeat as she ate and slept. Then her oxygen ran out and she quietly died.
In May 1958 the Soviets launched Sputnik 3, a repeat of the first Sputnik mission, and then topped that feat by sending Luna 1 into solar orbit on January 2, 1959. This probe had been intended to hit the moon, and though the Soviet engineers missed their target by about 3,700 miles, their spacecraft became the first human object to escape the earth’s gravity.
Meanwhile, the United States was having trouble getting its rockets off the ground. Just two months after Sputnik, with an entire world watching, the first American attempt to orbit a satellite exploded at launch. “Oh What a Flopnik!” was how one newspaper headline described the debacle.62
Though the U.S. was finally able to orbit six satellites in the next two years, fifteen other rockets were failures. Some exploded on the launch pad. Others broke apart in flight. Many simply fizzled, crashing back to earth.
Not surprisingly, the Soviets were proud of their lead in space. As Frol Kozlov, the First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, said at the opening ceremonies of the Soviet cultural exhibit, “We do not conceal that [these launches] required us to tax our strength considerably, but neither do we conceal our pride in the results of our toil.”63
With the launch of the Sputniks, American society was panic-stricken: were capitalism and democracy unable to compete with a government-run communist state? More Americans then ever wondered if communism might actually be a better economic system.
* * *
Frank Borman meanwhile had decided he needed a new challenge. From 1957 to 1960 he had been a teacher of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics at West Point. Now he applied and was accepted to the test pilots’ school at Edwards Air Force Base. Though he was aware of the emerging space race, he was more interested in advancing his military career while also helping to develop his country’s military defense. He, Susan, and their two boys, now nine and seven, climbed into a brand new 1960 Chevy and drove across the country. The Bormans were once again moving up in the world.
At the same time, Jim Lovell was accepted as test pilot at the U.S. Navy Aircraft Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, graduating first in his class. He had watched with growing frustration as all around him the science of rocketry bloomed. Lovell still wanted to build rockets, and flying Navy jets in routine patrols was no longer getting him closer to that dream. Pax River, as the test pilots called it, was one of the places he might get a chance to do so. He and Marilyn packed up their two kids, four-year-old Barbara and two-year-old Jay, and set off across the country for the coast of Maryland.
For the same reasons and at the same moment, Bill Anders also applied to the Air Force test pilots’ school at Edwards. He had watched the momentum build in the space race and realized that human beings would soon be flying into space. “That’s what I’d like to do,” he told Valerie.64 Unfortunately, because he lacked an advanced degree, Edwards Air Force Base rejected his application. Undeterred, he immediately enrolled in the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, and began two years of study in nuclear engineering and aeronautics.
Whether they knew it or not, all three men were putting themselves on the front lines of the Cold War, a war that was about to enter its hottest and most violent years.65
3. “ THAT EARTH IS SURE LOOKING SMALL.”
To everyone on earth, the giant Saturn rocket and its Apollo 8 command module had now been reduced to three trebly voices on the radio.
To the astronauts, the earth had become a giant ball in space, shrinking from them at a startling rate. Its surface was a blue and white swirl of clouds and ocean, with some brown patches peeking out underneath the white. Only forty minutes after leaving earth orbit they were mo
re than 20,000 miles from home.
With the earth still close by, Anders focused on getting 16mm movie and 70mm still shots of its retreating disk. He set the movie camera on its bracket, turned it on, then aimed a still camera out the window at the S4B engine. As he stared at the earth the spacecraft slowly shifted position, tilting so that the earth’s globe moved from the bottom of the window to the top. Anders could see one of the third stage panels dropping away from them as it drifted out into space. The whole image reminded him of several scenes from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, playing in the theaters at that very moment.
Only here, it was real.
Other incongruities between that film and real life stood out. In 2001, the spaceships floated through space to the melodic harmonies of Strauss and Stravinsky. Apollo 8’s astronauts were serenaded by pop music, mostly records that Anders had given mission control prior to leaving Houston. At that moment the ground was piping up Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass.
The spaceships in 2001 were large, sophisticated, and designed to make space travel seem as ordinary as possible. Stewardesses brought passengers meals. Payphones were available to make private phone calls to family and friends. Everyone traveled in street clothes, and were provided magnetic soles for their shoes so that they could “walk” from one part of the ship to another.
Nothing on Apollo 8 was comparable. Apollo 8 was a small, experimental spacecraft, being tested with human occupants for only the second time. For its trip to the moon, it had two sections, the small mini-van-sized command module where the astronauts lived, and the service module, which held the main engine, power supply, and life support systems.
The command module was shaped like a very wide-mouthed ice cream cone, about twelve feet high with a round base about thirteen feet across. Its entire white surface was covered with a honeycomb made of fiberglass and injected with epoxy resin. When the spacecraft finally reentered the earth’s atmosphere on its way home, this resin would burn off, taking the intense heat with it, and thereby protecting the three men inside.
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