This is the first-ever publication detailing the Navy's role in manned spacecraft recovery from 1961 to 1975, from Alan Shepherd's initial suborbital mission to the Apollo-Soyuz flight, which inaugurated the first space collaboration between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Splashdown: NASA, the Navy, and Space Flight Recovery takes the reader through a detailed explanation of how recovery forces on land, sea, and in the air were deployed across the globe to be trained for any and all emergencies and eventualities. This book gives concise histories of all prime recovery ships as well as back-up ships in both manned and unmanned missions, with every ship's history followed by a retelling of their space missions.