The Gemini II Recovery, Recovered

Recently, I've found myself saying frequently that I'm very much a child of the space age, and here is one of the reasons why.  When we were kids, my dad would break out his slide collection every once in a while and give us a show.  More often than not, we would be treated to photos my dad took when he was in the navy in the 1960's.  I fondly recall seeing images of the Gemini II landing, which his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Lake Champlain, recovered.  I mean, I was the crazy kid to get up early in the 1980's to see space shuttle launches, so I guess I figured every kid had a dad who got to be there when space capsules splashed down, right?  I know now that these are really special memories, and I was a lucky kid to have been this close to the space race. For me, it was just a part of life to dream about going to space... I know I did.  I was the kid that was going to land on Mars, apparently.

When my dad retired and moved to North Carolina recently, he asked me to hang on to his photos and slides until he could transport them himself.  Well, I did what any normal kid would do some 30 years later... I went rumaging thru the archives until I could find those Gemini II images... and I did.  My dad recently turned 70, and I scanned a few of the slides to be incorporated in a photo display that my younger sister put together.  Below are the best of these images.  I will have them professionally scanned someday, bur for now, 1600 dpi scanning from my own scanner will have to do.  They have a bit of an Instagrammy, ghostly quality... but if nothing else, they are historic and simply must be shared.  These haven't really been seen by anyone in decades.  So here for you are some recovered images of the recovery of Gemini II, as seen thru the lens and the eyes of a navy meterologist, who happens to have the same name as me :-)

 

P.S. I've been told that somewhere in the collection are a few snapshots of the astronauts themselves.  Looks like I have more digging to do...  When I find them, I will post them on this blog.

Revision:  I was advised by said retired meteorologist, that these were in fact Gemini II, an unmanned mission.  U.S.S. Lake Champlain also picked up Gemini V which carried Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad.  I've revised this blog post to correct the mission, which I had previously described as Gemini V.  These images are in fact from Gemini II.  More to come, once I do some more digging. (6/6/2015)