Did Ron Howard exaggerate the reentry scene in the movie Apollo 13?
A little bit, maybe, but not much.
- By Joe Pappalardo
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 01, 2007
A group of astronauts and flight controllers monitor the action in Mission Control during the Apollo 13 mission. NASA
History is sometimes a tricky thing. And when you mix history with Hollywood, the truth can become a casualty—even in cases where movies take pains to be accurate.
The 1995 film Apollo 13 has been praised for its accuracy, but many people still wonder if director Ron Howard played up the tension among the astronauts and inside mission control to heighten the movie's emotional impact. Bill Parkinson, an attorney working for the U.S. Department of Justice in Dallas, is one of the wonderers. "Apollo 13 portrayed the capsule's reentry as protracted beyond all expectations," he writes. "As a teenage junkie for all things aeronautical, I followed that flight and seem to recall that the flight's descent path was shallower than ideal, and that the blackout period was indeed much longer than it should have been. [But] I'm certain the movie embellished the scenario for dramatic effect. Can you help before I tear out what little is left of my hair when the movie is on?"
We turned to someone who should be able to give us the straight scoop: Apollo 13 flight director Gene Kranz, now retired in Texas. (For those who don't know, Kranz was the well-dressed character in the film played by Ed Harris.)
After an onboard oxygen tank exploded en route to the moon on April 13, 1970, the Apollo 13 crew had to abort their mission and return to Earth. The final ordeal of the flight was a radio silence, or blackout, caused by ionized air surrounding the command module during its superheated reentry through the atmosphere. With no radio signal, there was "no way to tell" how the crew and ship were faring, Kranz says. "There was no telemetry from Odyssey until the end of blackout," he recalls. "Take a look at the picture of the flight directors during blackout....There was some distress, but nothing we could do about it." To make matters worse, the blackout went on longer than usual because the reentry path for Apollo 13 was longer and shallower than normal. "Per my mission log it started at 142:39 and ended at 142:45— a total of six minutes," Kranz relates. "Blackout was 1:27 longer than predicted…. Toughest minute and a half we ever had."
Henry Cooper's 1973 book Thirteen: The Flight That Failed describes the tension: "After three minutes of blackout, Kranz put through a call to [lead retro-fire officer Chuck] Deiterich to find out how much longer they had to wait. Deiterich said it should be over in another thirty seconds. At the end of thirty seconds, there was still no word from the astronauts, and Deiterich began to get concerned. Thirty seconds later, the astronauts still hadn't reported in, and Deiterich was alarmed."
Even when they finally heard astronaut Jack Swigert's voice over the radio, confirming that the crew had survived, the controllers didn't say a word, just kept silent until the capsule splashed down in the Pacific nine minutes later, according to Cooper's account. (In the movie, as soon as the astronauts are proven to be alive, the cheering starts.) At 12:07 p.m. Houston time on April 17, Odyssey hit water and the flight controllers finally cheered.
At least one contemporary account did downplay the drama of that day. BBC reporter Reginald Turnill wrote that after Swigert, Jim Lovell, and Fred Haise moved into the command module in preparation for their return, "it was a familiar reentry procedure." Kranz scoffs at this. "We had a 500-plus item checklist that had been written only hours before," he says. "Power and water were critical, we did an emergency trajectory correction maneuver, and a battery was predicted to fail about the time the chutes came out. Nothing about the reentry was routine in mission control."
It seems, then, that the movie got the reentry scene mostly right. But that's not to say Howard has a perfect record. On the tenth anniversary DVD of Apollo 13, Lovell and his wife Marilyn detail several inaccuracies, including the inflated role of astronaut Ken Mattingly (whose work is an amalgamation of efforts undertaken by several astronauts and engineers), exaggerated doubts about Swigert's role in the mission, and the fact that the engine burn that corrected their course was not, as the movie showed, aimed in the direction of Earth.
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Related topics: Aerospace Films Apollo 20th Century Aviation
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Comments (8)
There might be a few inaccuracies but it was (and still is) a bloody good movie.
Posted by Ron Gibson on July 21,2008 | 01:02 AM
This is one of the most breathless true life films imaginable.It remains a story which really did, and still does, capture the spirit of adventure and innovation.
Posted by Peter Lyons on July 26,2008 | 10:22 AM
I too followed that flight, and still am an incurable aviation enthusiast. The fact that I'm an aviator today is a direct result of watching the Apollo missions on our first t.v.
In my humble opinion, I think Mr. Howard and his crew did a splendid job of portraying the tenacity and dedication of all those who turned a potential national tragedy, and maybe the end of the Apollo missions, into a heroic celebration of success! To this day when someone tells me "It can't be done" or "It's too hard" I say "Remember Apollo 13!" and if they don't know what I'm talking about I tell them to go rent the movie....It's close enough.
Posted by Andy Bisceglia on September 12,2008 | 10:24 AM
When all is said and done, at the end of the day if a film can teach a new generatation about one of the most important times is hitory and the people who lived within that time and momment , it doesn't matter about the small details right or wrong, but the bigger picture and what where history has taken us and what it can teach us.
''Apollo 13'' will stand in years to come as a great film and a great survival story
Posted by Andrew Thorne on October 18,2008 | 11:04 AM
While in high school I followed every Apollo flight from start to finish, at least as much as was shown on our old 23" black and white tv and written in the newspaper. I'm familiar with the technical inaccuracies in the movie, but I look past those to see the dramatic entertainment value to the general public. Drama and danger is what captured the imagination and excitement of our younger generation and made the move a success. They now know more about the Apollo program than they ever did before. It was not advertised as an accurate documentary of the actual moon shot, we'll leave that to the experts like Bill Kaysing and Bart Sibrel (Yawn, of course I'm kidding). I am very capable of watching this movie with my family and being very, very entertained. Well done, Ron Howard!
Posted by Bob Barton on December 8,2008 | 02:25 PM
First of all its a movie. Hollywood is in the BUSINESS of making movies and making a PROFIT on them. They are not in historical education. If you want the history, go and read a book(s). I'm sure that there were many instances in the movie that weren't 100% accurate, most of the conversations for example. Now movies like Apollo 13 and Gettysburg can get young and old alike excited about an historical event, which hopefully will lead them to doing their own research.
Posted by Willi Schumacher on March 1,2010 | 04:09 PM
Great movie-pretty accurate.
One thing that bothered me was the scene added in the LM between Haise and Swigert just to add some conflict. As if the drama in space wasn't enough. I spoke with Fred Haise back in 2001 about that scene, as I recall he didn't like it either.
Posting this on 1 March 2010 when we no longer have a manned US Space Program for the first time in over 51 years.
Posted by Matt Scherzi on March 1,2010 | 05:14 PM
Right Will. Gettysburg also definitely on the list. Good point to end with Matt. I still remember my whole family staying up late that summer night Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first walked on the moon. And it wasn't that I wanted to be an astonaut "when I grew up." It was the other technical info, as the movie shows constantly running in the background, that kindled my interest in math and science. And we wonder why young people today have so little interest in those subjects. There is nothing that inspires them today.
Posted by Steve Lloyd on March 10,2011 | 08:03 PM