By Philip R. Devlin.
On June 28, 1963, Brigadier General George R. Stanley of the Connecticut Air National Guard stationed at Bradley Field in Windsor Locks nominated four fighter pilots from Connecticut to the NASA astronaut program. One of these pilots, Captain John L. “Jack” Swigert, was eventually accepted into the Apollo training program in 1966. He was one of 351 nominated to the program; only 19 were accepted. Swigert, a resident of Rockville at the time, had flown the F-100 Super Sabre fighter jet at Bradley from 1960-1965 as a member of the 118th Fighter Squadron. In addition, Swigert worked as a test pilot for Pratt and Whitney Aircraft. My father, who was a colonel at the air base, knew Swigert.
John Leonard Swigert was born on August 30, 1931, in Denver, Colorado. Fascinated with flight, young Swigert obtained his private pilot’s license by age 16. Swigert attended the University of Colorado, where he obtained a BS in Mechanical Engineering in 1953. Swigert joined the Air Force after college graduation. Following his active-duty service, he served in the Massachusetts Air Guard from 1957-1960 and then in the Connecticut Air Guard for the next five years.. While in Connecticut, he also attended the RPI campus in Hartford, CT, where he received a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1965 and an MBA from the University of Hartford in 1967.
Jack Swigert is best known as a member of the Apollo 13 mission on April 11, 1970. Originally chosen as the backup command module pilot for that mission, Swigert took Ken Mattingly’s place after Mattingly had been exposed to the German measles and was pulled from the crew. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission was immortalized in the 1995 film starring Tom Hanks entitled “Apollo 13.” Kevin Bacon played the role of Jack Swigert. The three Apollo astronauts (Swigert, Jim Lovell, and Fred Haise) had to scramble and to improvise with the materials on hand to save their lives after an oxygen tank explosion put their lives in jeopardy.
Though the crew never made it to the moon, their creative improvisations have served to inspire generations of Americans. President Richard Nixon had this to say about the crew, as he presented them with the Presidential Freedom Medal on April 18, 1970:
“I think it is important that, out of this mission, we recognize that it was not a failure. The three astronauts did not reach the moon, but they reached the hearts of millions of people in American and in the world. They reminded us…that men do count; the individual does count. They reminded us that in these days machines can go wrong and that when machines go wrong, then the man or the woman, as the case may be, really counts.”
Jack Swigert was subsequently named to an Apollo-Soyuz mission scheduled for 1975 but was later pulled from that mission after he was implicated in the Apollo 15 Postage Stamp Cover Scandal.
Following his career as an astronaut, Jack Swigert was elected to Congress from Colorado in 1982 with 64% of the popular vote; however, while campaigning, he developed a malignant tumor in his right nasal passage that spread throughout his body. Jack Swigert died on December 27, 1982, just days before he would have been sworn in as a congressman.
