FINAL THOUGHTS

Curt Newport is not one to let the grass grow under his feet. Since the recovery of Liberty Bell 7 he has been involved in a number of enterprises and recoveries. These include the recovery of Blackhawk helicopter 221 off Fiji; the Australian Navy’s Remora Submarine Rescue System near Fremantle, Western Australia; the search for Air France 447 out of Natal, Brazil; and locating an E-2C Hawkeye (Bluetail 601) in the Arabian Sea and an AV-8 Harrier in the Gulf of Aden. More recently there was a

Curt Newport talks to reporters on the dock at Port Canaveral. (NASA-KSC, Photo ID KSC-99PP-1030)

Former McDonnell pad leader Guenter Wendt (left) and Lowell Grissom view the salvaged spacecraft. (Photo: Kansas Center and Space Center)

Republic of China Air Force F-16 fighter that went down in the Taiwan Straits and a highly classified mission which, unfortunately, no one will ever know about.

“People never know much about my ‘real job,’” he muses, “and based on Liberty Bell 7, the Indianapolis, or the Belgrano, probably believe I’ve had few successes. But in reality, most of the search and recovery operations I’ve supported have been suc­cessfully completed. It helps to have the government’s money to do them right; most of these historic project are always done cutting corners to save money and that is while many of them fail.”25

In concluding the recovery story, Curt Newport asked to make one final comment. “In the end, after the dust settled, it was good to be proven right and everyone else wrong. It simply came down to the fact that no one else knew what I knew because they had not read all the documents, done the underwater work in the ocean, and sim­ply thought of a way to do it. There was never any question in my mind that it could be done. All we needed was the will to do it, the right equipment, people, and of course, the money.

“The only bad taste in my mouth about this thing is that NASA, as an agency, never said an official word to me after the recovery, unlike Jeff Bezos’ F-1 engine salvage [in 2013]. I did receive a couple of nice letters from George Abbey (JSC) and Art Stephenson (Marshall Space Flight Center), but that was only because they knew me and recognized how much work I did. But NASA? Never a word. I think they simply regarded the capsule’s loss as an embarrassment, even after 38 years.”26