LI man recalls witnessing John Glenn's return from space

For most of his life since that day at sea, the memory of what Raymond Cody witnessed has seemed as far off as a cork bobbing on the horizon.

But as Cody perused a scrapbook of photographs from his Navy days, the longtime Wantagh resident realized how close he had been to an epic moment in history, one that captured the world's attention 50 years ago tomorrow.

Cody, 70, was a newly enlisted seaman aboard the destroyer USS Noa on Feb. 20, 1962, when astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., strapped inside his tiny Friendship 7 space capsule, floated down and into the Atlantic Ocean after orbiting the Earth three times -- the first American to do so.

As the nation held its breath -- would Glenn be alive? -- Cody watched as the capsule was recovered and brought to the deck of the Noa, a few feet from Cody. After anxious minutes, the capsule door opened and a smiling Glenn emerged. Across America -- and the world -- millions sat spellbound in front of their television sets, waiting for news that Glenn was safe.

"I remember cheering, everybody aboard cheering, as he came out -- cheering and welcoming him aboard," Cody said. "It was miraculous for him to be in perfect health like that."

Cody, who had joined the Navy only 10 months earlier, was 20 years old when chance placed him directly in the path of Glenn's space capsule.

A sequence of events stemming from a malfunctioning sensor led the Friendship 7 to splash down some 40 miles from its intended target near the aircraft carrier USS Randolph.

"We heard the [sonic] boom and looked up, and somebody said, 'There he is,' " Cody recalled of watching the capsule parachute descend, some 125 miles northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Crew members aboard the Noa, which was the closest member of a recovery flotilla to the landing, plucked Glenn's spacecraft from the waves.

Now, space missions are relatively commonplace. More than 500 people from over three dozen countries have orbited the Earth since Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first in April 1961. A dozen have walked on the moon. Scores more have performed spacewalks while traveling at nearly 5 miles per second, or have lived aboard space stations for months at a time.

But when Cody watched Glenn back out of his tiny capsule, he was witnessing something no American had ever seen before. At the height of the space race with the Soviet Union, an American had survived the challenge of riding atop a rocket powered by a quarter-million pounds of explosives into the vacuum of space and back again. Glenn, who was traveling at 17,500 mph, knew that a miscalculation of a few degrees could have caused his craft to descend through the atmosphere too quickly and become incinerated in a fireball.

In fact, unnerving mishaps had bedeviled Glenn's mission from the start.

The flight itself was postponed for weeks when leaking fuel soaked an insulation blanket on the Atlas rocket.

Once in orbit, a malfunctioning stabilizing system caused the spacecraft to tumble slightly. Forced to try to control the craft manually, Glenn burned through precious steering fuel far more quickly than planned. Mission controllers decided to end the mission after three orbits, instead of the seven that had been approved.

Even then, a sensor indicated incorrectly that a heat shield that would protect the spacecraft from burning up during re-entry was in danger of falling off. Glenn would later recall seeing chunks of glowing metal flying past his spacecraft, and wondering whether he would survive.

"As I glanced out of the little window above my head, I could see pieces of the retro pack burning, coming back past the window," Glenn, 90, said during a recent Newsday interview in his office at a public policy institute named in his honor at Ohio State University.

"Obviously it was something I was very concerned about," Glenn said. "I couldn't be absolutely certain then whether it was the retro pack or the heat shield was breaking up."

Waiting below, members of the Noa's crew were concerned as well, Cody recalled.

"We knew this was something monumental, the first time someone had orbited, but we weren't sure if he would be alive, would be breathing, or whether he would have been burned to a crisp," Cody said. "We weren't sure until that door opened and we could hear him talking."

Cody shot several photographs of Glenn in the first moments the astronaut was safely aboard the Noa.

But life after the Navy intervened, and the photographs were forgotten. After a single four-year enlistment, the Baldwin High School graduate returned to Long Island, married a woman he had known since high school, raised two boys, and retired a dozen years ago after a long career at the Long Island Lighting Co.

He said he placed so little significance on his presence at the Glenn landing that he rarely mentioned it. He said that, until recently, relatively few of the people in his circles knew of his front-row seat in history.

"When history's happening right in front of you, it doesn't hit you right away," Cody said.

"It never dawned on me that it would become a defining moment in history," he said. "But obviously it was."

A JOURNEY INTO HISTORY

THE CAPSULE

The Friendship 7. The cone-shaped Mercury capsule was 6.8 feet long and 6.2 feet in diameter, with just 1.7 cubic meters of habitable space.

THE FLIGHT

First Americancq to orbit the Earth, Feb. 20, 1962. His three (out of seven planned) circuits around the planet took 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds, at a height of about 100 miles.

THE RETURN

Splashdown in Atlantic Ocean, 125 miles northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was picked up by the Navy destroyer Noa.

THE CELEBRATION

Ticker-tape parade in Manhattan on March 1, 1962.

Sources: NASA, U.S. Centennial Flight Commission