Michael Collins – IN FOCUS

The life story of Michael Collins.

Timecodes
0:00 – Intro
0:15 – Early Life
3:14 – Military Service
6:58 – Test Pilot
9:24 – The NASA Years
10:30 – Gemini
12:04 – Apollo
16:03 – Apollo 8
17:57 – Apollo 11
20:58 – Post NASA Years

As the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 11, Michael Collins contributed to accomplishing the challenge set down by President Kennedy but his story is much more than just 8 days in July 1969. The journey for Collins from the Earth to the Moon began in Italy on Halloween in 1930.

The fact that his father was serving as Defence Attaché in Rome, led to Collins being the second man born outside of the United States to travel to the Moon. His mother had an interest in art, and with one of the finest pieces of art by Michelangelo

Located nearby, he suspected that this played a part in the choice of Michael for his first name. Collins didn’t spend too long in the eternal city because the family moved to America when he was a year and a half, but he would return to the city of his birth for a very tumultuous

Welcome home. In his younger years, Collins would lead the life of a military brat, travelling from place to place, because of his father’s postings. His brother and two sisters were older and so he found himself many adventures to have

That would later add up to what he would call an ideal childhood for a young boy. In Oklahoma he took his parents car for an unexpected joy ride by inquisitively undoing the brake, which caused the car to roll into a nearby tree.

In Miami he would spend time on Al Capone’s dock looking out over the Biscayne Bay, that is until the infamous mobster was at home and then he would be told to leave by Capone’s bodyguards. Later on, when the family were living in Puerto Rico, Collins would briefly take the controls

During his first flight in an aircraft. Despite this, Collins stated that, unlike many of his peers at NASA, he had no particular interest in aircraft during this time. He rated, ”…chess, football or girls,” as more important interests during his youth.

Yet another posting for his father, this time to Washington D.C., resulted in Collins starting at a private all-boys school in September 1943. Here he played for the baseball team and made captain of the wrestling team. He also found many ways to make mischief, a trait that carried on into his adult life

Where the mischief would manifest itself now and again as an amusing comment that was able to make the audience of reporters burst into laughter and thus lighten even the dullest press conference. “Everybody looking at me!” A 1969 LIFE magazine article would lament how NASA had not, “…had the simple sense

Of press relations to put Collins in command? What a joy it could have been to cover this moon landing.” After graduating in June 1948, Collins considered a life in medicine and thought about becoming a doctor. His mother favoured a diplomatic career for him but being born into an illustrious military

Family, it was unsurprising when he chose to enter military life. Collins emulated his father and headed for the United States Military Academy in New York. After graduating from West Point in June 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree, Collins decided upon becoming a pilot in the Air Force.

Once he started flying Collins knew that he had made the right choice and during basic flight training in a T-6 Texan at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi he discovered that flying came easy to him. After completing his training in Texas, Collins earned his pilot’s wings in the summer of 1953.

By this time the Korean War had been raging on for three years and it was to this conflict that he was now intended for. He was sent to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada to learn combat aviation in the hope that it would prolong his life when faced with the enemy MiGs.

Collins would regard this training as the most hazardous undertaking he would engage in. Despite a shockingly high fatality rate, he was leading a fabulous life for a young man. He was learning dogfighting skills by day, and heading for the distractions of Las Vegas at night with his comrades.

At the end of July 1953, the Korean War came to an end and so after his two and a half month advanced training had finished, he was sent to George Air Force Base, California to join the 72nd Fighter Bomber Squadron, part of the 21st Fighter-Bomber Wing, where

He was instructed in deploying nuclear weapons and in 1954 the 21st Fighter-Bomber Wing was detailed to NATO, and his squadron was transferred to France. Collins arrived in France in January 1954 and joined his squadron based at the Châteauroux-Déols Air Base before relocating to the Chambley-Bussieres Air Base in 1955.

His deployment to France would be full of adventures, and life changing moments and one incident that came close to killing him. Collins would also have a fateful meeting with a young lady who was with the air force service club, working at the officers’ mess Introducing himself to her he said, “Hi,

I’m Mike Collins. Do you live here?” That young lady was Patricia Mary Finnegan. It wasn’t long before the young lady from Boston, Massachusetts started dating him. It was whilst on a NATO exercise that Collins would suddenly find himself in a cockpit filling with smoke, as a fire raged behind his cockpit.

With his wingman shouting, “You’re on fire. Get out, get out”! Collins ejected from his burning F-86 Sabre. Safely back at his base, Collins would, over a few stiff drinks, recount his adventure to, “…a small but select audience, including my best girl Pat Finnegan”.

On the 28th April, 1957, after he had first completed a redeployment in West Germany during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, Mike and Patricia got married in France. It was a marriage that would last nearly fifty seven years until Patricia’s death on the 9th April, 2014.

Collins would say of his wife, “She was the love of my life, the one and only love of my life.” As 1957 came to an end it was time for Collins to leave France and return to the States.

During a return visit in 1967 he would say of his time on deployment to Chambley-Bussieres Air Force Base, “I spent the three most wonderful years of my life here. My whole life, my career, it’s here that I built them”.

With a desire to push himself in the latest aircraft that the air force had, he set his eyes on becoming a test pilot. Back in America, what followed for Collins was a spell as an aircraft maintenance officer at, first a Mobile Training Detachment, and then a Field Training Detachment.

Neither held much joy for him but he sought out as many flying opportunities as he could to amass the required hours to qualify for Test Pilot School. As soon as he had acquired the magic number of 1,500 flying hours he put in his application.

The word back was good, and he headed for Edwards Air Force Base, California on the 29th August 1960. Entering the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School was a sobering experience for Collins. It wouldn’t be the last time that he found himself amongst a group of men who seemed

To have more experience and supreme flying skills. It was at Edwards that his path crossed with the likes of Frank Borman, Thomas Stafford, James Irwin, Charles Bassett, Edward Givens and Joe Engle. Following classroom tuition he was sent to the much sort after fighter branch of Test Ops in the spring of 1961.

Like so many others who made it into the astronaut ranks, getting there was a step process, pilot, test pilot, astronaut. 1962 was the year that Collins decided to make that final step. He had not always dreamt of flying in space, it was the feat of orbiting the Earth by John

Glenn in February of that year that attracted his attention to it, and shortly afterwards, in April, he became aware that NASA was looking for more men to join the original seven super heroes of Mercury. After applying, he was sent for testing, interviews, physical examinations and psychological evaluations,

Some of which he admits he may not have taken seriously enough, and as a result he found out in September that he had not made the grade. It was a bitter blow for Collins, but being a self-confessed, “…perpetual optimist,”

He applied for and was accepted in October at the newly formed USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School, to study subjects such as Astrophysics and orbital mechanics. 1963 was a year of personal highs and lows for Collins. In February he and his wife had their third child, Michael, a son to join their two daughters

Kathleen born in 1959 and Ann born in 1961. After completing his course and hearing that NASA were once again accepting applications, Collins applied and headed for the selection process for the third group of astronauts. It was during June that Collins suffered a personal sadness when his father, Major General

James Lawton Collins, passed away and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, a place Collins would revisit several times over the course of his astronaut career. In September he was back at Houston for more interviews and on the 14th of October, he

Took a telephone call from Deke Slayton asking if he still wanted to come and work for NASA. Collins had been successful and was now an astronaut, something he would call, “…as exciting a job as anyone could ever have”. With his sights now set on space, Collins moved to Houston.

And it would be a time of tragedy, disappointment and finally triumph. After induction to the agency, basic training followed which included survival courses and an introduction to geology. and not long after he was assigned as the person with the speciality within the astronaut office for pressure suits and Extravehicular activities.

Now at NASA, Collins would once again find himself in an awe-inspiring group of men and would go as far as to call himself, “…the runt of the litter”. If Collins had any reservations about his abilities, his bosses and his peers had no such doubts.

At the request of Shepard, the astronauts completed a peer test to rank their colleagues. The results of this were used by his other boss Slayton to back up his own opinions formed during the selection process. Slayton later stated, “The ones who came to the top of the peer ratings were pretty

Much the ones I had assigned to the later Gemini missions.” The first astronaut from the 3rd Group to be officially assigned to a crew was Collins, who on the 1st July, 1965 was named as the Gemini 7 backup pilot alongside Ed White as the backup Commander.

While some of his peers scratched their heads and wondered how to get themselves onto a crew, Collins had been propelled to the front of the queue. After backing up Gemini 7, Collins, was paired with John Young on the prime crew for Gemini

10, with the official announcement of this crew being made on the 25th January, 1966. Even as he was training for his Gemini 10 flight, Collins was linked to another crew assignment. When the original prime crew for Gemini 9 of Elliot See and Charles Bassett were killed

In an accident, Slayton was forced into a wholesale reshuffling of crews. Planning ahead, he had intended on using Frank Borman, Charles Bassett and William Anders on the backup crew of the AS-205 (Apollo 2) mission but he now moved Anders over to the

Gemini 11 backup crew and pencilled in Collins for the role of back up Lunar Module Pilot. Before Collins could think of Apollo, he had a Gemini mission to fly. Gemini 10 was to be a three day mission between the 18th and the 21st of July, 1966.

The crew would rendezvous and dock with one Agena and then use its rocket engine to boost them to a new altitude record of 475 miles. Then they would rendezvous with another Agena where Collins would spacewalk over to it during one of three individual spacecraft hatch openings.

When Gemini 10 was completed, Collins was officially announced as part of the AS-205 (Apollo 2) backup crew on the 29th of September, 1966. This meant that he was now a Lunar Module Pilot on a crew that Slayton thought would make a good future lunar landing crew.

Although Collins was pleased with his early crew assignment during Apollo, it was short lived because Schirra’s AS-205 (Apollo 2) mission was cancelled on the 17th of November, 1966. Collins stated that he wasn’t too upset because he considered the Apollo 2 mission

Boring, it didn’t include a Lunar Module and he found Schirra’s prime crew, “…exasperating.” Collins would add that Schirra, “…was late every morning,” “…never tried to catch up with the schedule,” and spent too long, “…on guffaws, coffee and war stories.”

Collins didn’t have too long to wait for his next assignment but it had mixed news for him. On the 22nd of December, 1966 he was announced as a prime crew member on the SA-503 (Apollo 3), E-mission, which was to be the first manned flight of the Saturn V with a high-altitude

Test of the Command and Service Modules and Lunar Module spacecraft. Unfortunately for Collins and his lunar landing aspirations, Stafford had been given his own command which meant that with Anders rejoining the crew, he was promoted to the Command Module Pilot role.

Disappointed at the end of his Lunar Module Pilot training, Collins threw himself into learning his new role as a Command Module specialist, or as he dryly put it, “…the owner of the leaky plumbing”, and “…all the things I was least interested in doing”.

News of a more devastating nature reached Collins at the start of the new year. His fellow Group 3 colleague Roger Chaffee had been trapped inside a burning spacecraft and Collins was the one given the awful task of telling Martha Chaffee that her husband was dead.

At that point NASA still didn’t know if they had been asphyxiated or burnt to death, so it was a grim task. Following the fire, SA-503 (Apollo 3) became Apollo 9 and its crew of Borman, Collins and Anders was officially announced on the 20th of November, 1967.

Just days before this announcement, Collins had been at the Cape to witness the first ever launch of a Saturn V rocket on the 9th of November, 1967. Collins recalled the colour of launch going from”…red-orange”, to “…an incandescent white at its core and a dirty brown at its edges”.

As the rocket gained height the noise hit, “…with a sudden jolt”, and caused the ground to vibrate making him feel like, “…a giant had grabbed my shirtfront and started shaking”. As Collins toiled in the simulators and mastered the guidance and navigation system another far more overriding matter steadily made its presence felt.

On the 12th of July, 1968 Collins was diagnosed with a growth pressing on his spinal cord. Following his diagnosis, Collins underwent surgery on the 22nd of July at the Air Force Hospital at San Antonio. With his recuperation from the surgery taking up to three months Collins was grounded and

His place on the prime crew was taken by his backup, James Lovell. In turn Lovell was replaced by the Apollo 9 backup Lunar Module Pilot, Aldrin, who moved up to the Command Module Pilot slot. The subsequent gap in the training cycle for Collins, plus Aldrin’s experience in the

Command Module Pilot backup role explains why it was Aldrin and not Collins sitting in the centre couch for the Apollo 11 launch. As Collins recovered from the surgery, he received more disheartening news. Apollo 9 was now going to be Apollo 8 and Apollo 8 was going to the Moon.

This change in flight profile meant that Anders, who had been born in Hong Kong, would be the first person born outside of America to go to the Moon. As his health improved and the circumlunar flight around the Moon became a lunar orbital

Mission, Collins became mad at both Borman and Slayton who he felt had made the wrong decision. As far as Collins was concerned, Apollo 8 was the most important mission stating, “I think Apollo 8 was about leaving and Apollo 11 was about arriving.

100 years from now, historians may say Apollo 8 is more significant; it’s more significant to leave than it is to arrive”. The closest Collins would get to the Moon during Apollo 8 would be a monitor in Mission

Control, which is exactly where he was siting when the time came to give the command to send humans to the Moon for the first time. Acting as Capcom, Michael Collins gave the call, “Apollo 8, Houston”. “Go ahead Houston,” “Apollo 8, you are go for TLI. Over”.

The equally matter of fact response from the spacecraft was, “Roger. We understand we are go for T.L.I.”. That simple exchange signalled the commitment to head for the Moon. Collins would later bemoan the lack of grandiose in the command he sent up to the crew because it was such a significant moment.

As the crew of Apollo 8 headed back to the Earth, Collins future was being decided by Slayton and Armstrong who were discussing the choice of the other two members for Apollo 11. Collins was not privy to these discussions and so as far as he was concerned his future was uncertain.

As Mission Control erupted into joy as Apollo 8 splashed down, there was perhaps only one person within NASA that wasn’t elated at the end of the flight. Mike Collins, the man dropped from the crew, looked around at the celebrations and reflected

On the time that he had given to getting this mission ready to fly. He later wrote that he wanted to cry but that was impossible in the testosterone and cigar smoke filled arena of Mission Control, so he simply left the room.

Getting assigned to a crew was no mean feat so Collins may have wondered what the future held for him but luckily Slayton was keen on setting precedents when it came to getting grounded astronauts back onto to flights, so Collins was offered a spot on the very next available crew.

He would, if he wanted it, be assigned as the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 11. It would be a role that would single him out as the man who would go all the way to the Moon but not actually walk on it, a fact that reporters and interviewers would comment on

For the rest of his life, but a fact that Collins would always respond to with civility and patience. “Well Apollo was designed to be a three man job and the third which I perform is I think as important no more so no less so to the other two positions.

I think I’d be a fool if I said that I had the best seat of the three, on the other hand I can say with complete candor and with complete honesty that I’m very happy to have the seat which I have and to be doing the job that I intend to do”.

Walking out of the crew quarters on the 16th July, 1969, Collins had one small fear. In his right hand he held his portable ventilator and a brown paper bag. Inside the bag was a tiny fish attached to a piece of wood.

It was intended to be presented to Guenter Wendt in the White Room as a pre-launch joke because Wendt was always telling Collins about his fishing skills and the large fish that he caught. As he waved to the assembled well-wishers and journalists, Collins had visions of dropping

The bag and seeing the fish flying out in front of the watching world, but fortunately no such faux pas happened on the way to the Moon. Years later that same small fish on a piece of wood would sell at auction for $10,625.

As the surface team made their historic Moon landing and Moon walk, Collins remained in orbit inside his “happy home”, Columbia. Far from feeling lonely, he revelled in his position high atop everything with the fragile Earth far off in the distance.

He had been offered a future backup role by Slayton, but he had replied that if Apollo 11 was a success he was going to leave NASA. “Houston. Columbia on the high-gain over.” “Roger. The EVA is progressing beautifully. They’re setting up the flag now.

I guess you’re about the only person around that doesn’t have TV coverage of the scene.” “That’s alright, I don’t mind a bit.” “They’ve got the flag up now and you can see the Stars and Stripes on the lunar surface.” “Beautiful, just beautiful. How is the quality of the TV?” “Oh!

It’s beautiful Mike, it really is.” As the clock ticked down to the ignition of the engine of the ascent stage Collins was about to face one of his greatest worries of the entire mission. He dreaded the thought of having to return home without his two crewmates so it was a

Huge relieve to hear that they were safely ascending towards a rendezvous with him. Back on the Earth the three men entered quarantine and, maybe with a nod to his artistic trait, he climbed back aboard his happy home and wrote, “Spacecraft 107 – alias apollo 11 – alias “Columbia”.

The Best Ship to Come Down the line. Michael Collins CMP,” although years later he confided that he should have added, “Thanks a lot”. Collins knew he would never be going back to the Moon, and left NASA in 1970.

It was a decision that he didn’t regret but even so he did admit that he did pay extra attention to the mission he would have commanded if he had taken up Slayton’s offer. “But did I look back when Gene Cernan stepped out onto the lunar surface?

I wasn’t you know green with envy or anything like that. No I had no cause for any great regret.” After quarantine, the crew went on a world-wide tour and for a brief moment Collins found himself back on the street outside of the apartment in Rome where his story had begun.

Much to the amusement of his wife Pat, he was mobbed by the crowd as a plaque was dedicated to him. In the years that followed, Collins, amongst other jobs, played a pivotal role in the establishment of the modern-day National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

As the first Director of the museum he oversaw the project to provide America with a home for its most treasured air and space exhibits. The Museum’s website would say of his contribution, “Collins would guide the Museum through its construction, hire a team of top-notch professionals, oversee the creation of first-rate

Exhibits, and launch the Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies”. In the midst of all this, he would also find time to write his autobiography, “Carrying The Fire,” which is often described as one of the most outstanding accounts of being an astronaut.

In his later years, Collins enjoyed his favourite pastimes of fishing, reading and exercising. He also painted, entitling one of his pieces, ‘A Helping Hand.’ It depicts the aircraft he flew during basic flight training, flying as wingman to the Command Module, Columbia.

He would also do a little acting by having a small part in the film, “Youth in Revolt”. He even got to speak to the crew of the International Space Station on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s splashdown. “This is Luca here from Italy.

I just wanted to let you know that what you did inspired not only kids and people in the United States but really all over the world.” “Well thank you very much and over your career of thirtysome years, you’ve really seen it all change haven’t you. I mean it’s getting more and more complex.

More and more important I would say the work that you’re doing up there, so bless you all and have a great remainder of your tour.” He described his retirement as being, “…simple but entertaining,” “fun and fulfilling,” a time where he could watch his children grow up and live a life in comfort.

Collins died on the 28th of April, 2021, the 64th anniversary of his wedding, at the age of 90 and received a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. U.S. Air Force Major General Michael Collins, or Mike as he preferred people to call him, lived a full life indeed, something he was fully aware of.

He wrote, “On my tombstone should be inscribed LUCKY because that is the overriding feeling I have today”.