it is ken mattingly and joe kerwin. ken had been very instrumental in looking at troubleshooting all the piece parts of these procedures, game plans, et cetera. joe kerwin would be the voice of mission control during the final hours and he's a medical doctor and his bedside manner with this crew was absolutely superb. he was a mentor, tutor, disciplinarian, teacher, i mean the whole nine yards that at times i almost felt he was onboard the spacecraft placing the crew's hands on the switches and just keeping them going. bottom line was, we continued to have a lot of surprises we had to do on emergency maneuver. one of our three command module batteries failed just about -- or was expected to fail just about the time the parachutes were due to come out and at the time that we landed, this issue was still in doubt. the final thing i remember about this mission was this re-entry period, because the mood in this room was becoming very -- what i'd say mellow. when we got ready to jettison the lunar module, we started speaking

they took pete conrad, paul whites and joe kerwin and trot them to install all this stuff on an eva. these were the most wild e. v. a.s we had ever done since the gemini program. anyway, this was -- i looked forward -- pete frank and i who was flight director. we basically sat 12-hour shifts in mission control every day for a year, and we were absolutely delighted when a flight director would call for us to sit down at the console and maybe take a shift -- there was one time that was really anecdotal. at the end of the first sky lab mission, several flight directors went to receive awards in huntsville. you need a flight director on shift here. myself and carried the time frame while they were off getting their rewards. flight directors came back from the awards, took a look at what we had done from the standpoint of flight planning, threw it all out and started from scratch on that day. the other thing that was neat, not really something, chuck lewis had been suffering from stomach problems all through the final mission until finally he required emergency surgery. so two weeks prior

and then they took pete conrad, paul weitz and joe kerwin and trot them to install all this stuff on an eva. and these were the most wild evas i think that we had ever, ever done since the gemini program. this was -- i looked forward -- pete frank and i, who was flight director, we basically sat 12-hour shifts in mission control every day for a year and we were absolutely delighted when a flight director would call for us to sit down at the console and maybe take a shift. there was one time that was really funny, anecdotal. at the end of the first sky lab mission, several of the flight directors went over to receive awards from -- over at huntsville and they flew them over in the nasa airplane. obviously they needed a flight director on shift here. myself and pete frank carried the time frame while they were off getting their awards. and flight directors came back from the awards, took a look at what we had done from a standpoint of flight planning, threw it all out and started from scratch. the other thing that was neat -- really something -- chuck lewis had been suffering from stom