Still hard to believe - Mim memory

In spite of Jim Harkin's assurances, Mim & I doubted that the three jets roaring down the beach, dipping their wings to us in the post-dawn of launch day could have been THE astronauts - until one of us found this article.  Then it all made sense & we FINALLY - 45 years after the experience - accepted it as having actually happened!

Excerpt:  If the Apollo 11 crew had been amiable strangers, then the men of Apollo 12 were best buddies, even before their NASA days. Chaikin tells the story of a friendship cultivated with Jim Rathmann, a car dealer in Cocoa Beach, whose contacts within General Motors allowed him to get them three matching gold Corvettes, the license plates of which were emblazoned with their respective crew positions: CDR for Conrad, CMP for Gordon, and LMP for Bean. 

 

Another anecdote is that Conrad—a long-time collector of baseball caps—tried to get a huge blue-and-white one that would fit over the helmet of his space suit; he then intended to bounce in front of the television camera on the lunar surface to give his audience a chuckle. Unfortunately, he could not think of a way of sneaking it aboard the spacecraft.

The humor also did not detract from the respect in which Conrad, Gordon, and Bean were held as one of the sharpest crews in the simulator. Their naval backgrounds had already led them to choose the name “Yankee Clipper” for the command and service modules and “Intrepid” for the lunar module, from a selection of names submitted by workers at North American and Grumman respectively. The Yankee Clipper name, in fact, had been submitted by George Glacken, a senior flight test engineer at North American; he felt that such ships of old had “majestically sailed the high seas with pride and prestige for a new America.” Intrepid came from Grumman planner Robert Lambert, who felt that it denoted “this nation’s resolute determination for continued exploration of space, stressing our astronauts’ fortitude and endurance of hardship in man’s continuing experiences for enlarging his Universe.”

 Apollo 12 crewmen (from left) Dick Gordon, Pete Conrad & Al Bean listen to instructions, 

ahead of a water egress training exercise in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo Credit: NASA

The over-indulgence of the Navy theme, however, may have proven a little too much for the Apollo 12 backup crew—Dave Scott, Al Worden, and Jim Irwin—who all happened to be Air Force officers