The Eagle Has Landed

Fifty years ago the world was going space crazy. All eyes were on what was going on 'up there' as three intrepid astronauts blasted off on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Back on earth we just couldn't get enough of all things astronautical. You could send away for a Weetabix Solar System Chart and as a young lad I well remember collecting small plastic models of the command and lunar modules found lurking in the bottom of packets of Corn Flakes. I too had a copy of the Ladybird book of The Rocket from the How it works series. 

Watching on our black and white telly- the pictures from Apollo 11 were in black and white anyway  - coverage of the moon landing itself went through the night of Sunday 20 July into Monday 21 July. I've a vague memory that my parents got me up super early to watch some of the historic event before setting off for school.  

Scheduled to run from 6.15 pm to 1.00 am the evening programme on ITV 

On ITV it was ITN that provided the programmes with Alastair Burnett presenting and Science Editor, Peter Fairley (I've still got one of his Peter Fairley's World of Wonders annuals)  and Paul Haney, a former voice of NASA's Mission Control. And because the final approach and moon landing happened on a Sunday evening London Weekend were in charge so we had the added glamour of David Frost and a 'starry' array of show business folk including Lulu, Cliff, Engelbert and Cilla. 

The commercial offering was a decidedly more glitzy affair than the Beeb's offering. Also on hand was Eric Sykes, Roger Bannister, Desmond Morris, Chris Bonnington, Dame Sybil Thorndike and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. There was also David Threlfall, the man who back in 1964 had made a 1000-1 bet at William Hill that there'd be a lunar landing by 1970. During the show he was presented with his £10,000 winnings and promised half to his parents whilst with the remainder he'd take a Caribbean holiday and invest the rest. Tragically he died in a car crash in November 1970.  

The BBC1 evening line-up for Sunday 20 July 1969

Over on the BBC, mainly BBC1 but with some colour simulcasts on BBC2, it was Cliff Michelmore, Patrick Moore and James Burke in the Apollo Space Studio and Michael Charlton at Houston Mission control. No showbiz shenanigans here, though on that Sunday evening you could've watched The Black and White Minstrel Show and over on BBC2 the Show of the Week featured Lulu (again).

As we now know most of the live television coverage was either not kept or just wiped and some of what does remain comes from off-air recordings. However, it's great to hear and see James Burke back again and his radio appearances include tonight's Archive on 4 called James Burke: Our Man on the Moon. Last week James was selecting his favourite music and talking about science and his love of all things Italian to Michael Berkeley in Private Passions.  

What of the radio? Perhaps surprisingly most of the live coverage was on Radios 1 and 2 with only some shared output on Radio 4. That station wasn't yet as news driven as it would become but the Apollo mission was covered on Today, The World at One and Radio Newsreel and some news coverage is in the archive. I'm not aware of any surviving recordings of the Radio 1 and Radio 2 programmes but off-air recordings must surely be in a box in someone's loft.

To give a taste of the what you might have heard here's a rather ropey recording made during the Apollo 12 mission in November that year with Arthur Garratt and science correspondent David Wilson covering the second moon walk during Paul Hollingdale's Breakfast Special.

The Apollo 11 mission Moon Special radio programmes were presented by Arthur Garratt and Colin Riach with Reginald Turnill at Mission Control. Reg became very well-known as the BBC's aerospace correspondent and, on his retirement in 1976, he continued to keep young viewers to Newsround informed. Arthur and Colin would continue to present the radio coverage of the Apollo missions through to Apollo 17 in 1972. Colin went on to produce Tomorrow's World and Young Scientist of the Year. Arthur presented science programmes on BBC tv and radio for about 30 years and he was on hand for the radio broadcasts of the Skylab launch in 1973 and the Apollo Soyuz mission in 1975. 

Unfortunately BBC Genome doesn't show these panels online so here's the detail for
Sunday 20 July 1969

The Radio Times panel for Monday 21 July 1969

For more on the first moon landing listen to the excellent World Service podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon.
See also the BBC Archive page on the moon landings.