Letter received from Alan Gilham 31/7/09
referring to item in UK papers
( the item was in the Daily telegraph
and can be seen here.........
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/5878519/Apollo-11-Moon-Landing-British-scientist-claims-to-have-coined-Neil-Armstrongs-one-small-step-line.html
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This item has caused a furore in my contacts in Australia. The former director of Tidbinbilla emailed me the following:
Dear Alan,
For your information Goldstone, Canberra and Madrid all had MSFN "Wing Sites" at the DSN stations for the Apollo Program. There were occasions during Apollo missions when the CSM and LEM could not be seen by one 26 metre antenna. For Apollo 11 tracking the LEM was assigned to Honeysuckle Creek and tracking the CSM was assigned to DSS 42, Tidbinbilla.
I tried to get through to Telegraph.co.uk when I first saw this claim by Gary Peach but was unsuccessful. It was in that publication I read it and was flabbergasted (or in current language gobsmacked). I was the Station Director of DSS42, Tidbinbilla, in July 1969. I remember Mr Peach who was a junior technician or operator, I am not sure which. He was certainly not an engineer as claimed in the first article I read, nor a scientist as later claimed. He never approached me with the suggestion as to what Neil Armstrong should say, nor did I immediately rush off and put the suggestion to Mission Control. In fact, contact with Houston could only be made through the Honeysuckle Creek MSFN Station and I certainly did not ask Tom Reid, Mike Dinn or John Saxon to relay any such suggestion.
The later version that Basil Monckton, an American, was his Station Director is ludicrous. Basil was an Australian Public Servant, a New Zealander by birth, and a civil engineer, who never held a position on any NASA tracking station, but who headed up the Network Support Facility, (NSF), which acted on NASA's behalf in civil engineering matters, (eg buildings, roads, fences, toilets etc.). Basil would have had dealings with NASA Headquarters, Goddard Spaceflight Center, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but never with Johnson Spaceflight Center (Mission Control) at Houston and never during realtime operations. I don't know if Gary Peach ever worked at NSF, but I doubt it.
I am glad that someone in the UK cares about the truth. You are welcome to pass my email address on to the English media if they are interested but I suspect that the truth would not make the sort of story that sells papers.
I hope that this is of interest to you in the search for the TRUTH.
Regards Alan Gilham.
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If you read the letter received from Monckton’s son, who should know his father well,
you will get a different impression. Where lays the truth?