page_title: Gerald D. Griffin
section_title: Apollo Program
hierarchical_section_title: Gerald D. Griffin / NASA career / NASA Manned Spacecraft Center / Apollo Program
caption_attribution_description: English: Three of the four Apollo 13 Flight Directors applaud the successful splashdown of the Command Module "Odyssey" while Dr. Robert R. Gilruth, Director, Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), and Dr. Christopher C. Kraft Jr., MSC Deputy Director, light up cigars (upper left). The Flight Directors are from left to right: Gerald D. Griffin, Eugene F. Kranz and Glynn S. Lunney. Apollo 13 crew members, astronauts James A. Lovell Jr., Commander; John L. Swigert Jr., Command Module pilot, and Fred W. Haise Jr., Lunar Module pilot, splashed down at 12:07:44 (CST) in the South Pacific Ocean, approximately four miles from the Apollo 13 prime recovery ship, the U.S.S. Iwo Jima.
context_page_description: Gerald D. "Gerry" Griffin is an American aeronautical engineer and former NASA official, who served as a flight director during the Apollo program and director of Johnson Space Center, succeeding Chris Kraft in 1982.
  When Griffin was nine years old his family moved to Fort Worth, Texas. Upon graduation from Texas A&M he was commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force. He served four years on active duty, first in flight training, then flying as a weapon systems officer in jet fighter-interceptors. In 1960 Griffin left active duty and began his space career as a systems engineer/flight controller at the USAF Satellite Test Center in Sunnyvale, California.
  In 1964 Griffin joined NASA in Houston as a flight controller in Mission Control, specializing in guidance, navigation and control systems during Project Gemini. In 1968 he was named a Mission Control flight director and served in that role for all of the Apollo Program manned missions, including all nine manned missions out to the Moon, six of which included lunar landings. Griffin's "Gold" team conducted half of the lunar landings made during Apollo: Apollos 14, 16, and 17.
context_section_description: As a result of the Apollo 1 fire the Apollo mission schedule was delayed for 21 months.  During the flight delay Gerry was named to be an Apollo flight director and served in that role for all of the Apollo Program manned missions. Gerry was lead flight director for three lunar missions: Apollo 12, Apollo 15, and Apollo 17.  Gerry's "Gold" team controlled two Earth launches (Apollo 12 and Apollo 15), and half of Apollo's six lunar landings (Apollo's 14, 16, and 17). His team was scheduled to conduct the landing of Apollo 13, but when the landing was canceled as a result of the oxygen tank explosion, his team played a key role in the safe return of the astronauts.
caption: Griffin (l) and other flight directors celebrate the Apollo 13 splashdown April 17, 1970
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