Jack Swigert

• 1. Introduction

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  Jack Swigert was born on the 30th of August, 1931, in Denver, Colorado, and he died on the 27th of December, 1982, seven days before he was supposed to be sworn into Congress. In between those two dates sits one of the stranger American lives of the twentieth century. He was the man who told Houston there was a problem. He was barred from his next spaceflight over autographed stamps. He won a congressional seat with 64% of the vote while being treated for cancer. The question the rest of this documentary tries to answer is not just what Jack Swigert did, but how someone so dedicated to reaching the next horizon kept running into walls on the way home.

• 2. The Boy Who Watched Planes

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  At fourteen, Swigert became fascinated by aviation after watching aircraft take off from Combs Field near Denver. He did not settle for being a spectator. He took on a newspaper route to pay for flying lessons, and by the time he was sixteen he held a private pilot's license. That early drive to turn observation into action would define the rest of his life.

  He attended Blessed Sacrament School, then Regis Jesuit High School, then East High School, graduating in 1949. He was a Second Class Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. None of those institutions were aviation programs, yet his private license predated his high school diploma.

  At the University of Colorado, he studied mechanical engineering while also playing football for the Buffaloes, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 1953. He later added a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Hartford campus in 1965, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Hartford in 1967. His father, Dr. John Leonard Swigert Sr., was an ophthalmologist. There is no record of where the aviation obsession came from. It arrived at fourteen and never left.

• 3. 7,200 Hours in the Air

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  Right out of Colorado in 1953, Swigert joined the United States Air Force and trained at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, completing both the Pilot Training Program and Gunnery School. He was then assigned as a fighter pilot in Japan and South Korea. In 1953, his plane crashed into a radar unit on a Korean airstrip. He survived.

  After his active-duty tour, he flew jets for the Massachusetts Air National Guard from 1957 to 1960, then shifted to the Connecticut Air National Guard from 1960 to 1965. In the civilian world, he worked as an engineering test pilot for Pratt and Whitney from February 1957 to June 1964, then moved to North American Aviation in the same capacity before NASA came calling.

  By the time he applied to the astronaut program, he had logged over 7,200 flight hours, more than 5,725 of them in jet aircraft. He had already applied to NASA's second and third astronaut selections without success. The fourth time, accepted into NASA Astronaut Group 5 in April 1966, he finally got in. He was thirty-four years old.

• 4. Three Days Before Launch

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  Swigert was originally assigned to the backup crew for Apollo 13, not the prime crew. He replaced astronaut Ken Mattingly just three days before the 11th of April, 1970, launch. The reason was straightforward and unsettling: the prime crew had been exposed to German measles, the rubella virus, through astronaut Charles Duke. Mattingly had no immunity to the disease. NASA would not risk him falling ill during critical phases of the mission and moved Swigert into the command module pilot seat.

  Apollo 13 was the third crewed attempt at a lunar landing. It did not land. An oxygen tank in the spacecraft's service module ruptured, and the mission was aborted. Swigert was the first person to speak the words that became one of the most recognized phrases in American space history: "Houston, we've had a problem here." Commander Jim Lovell then repeated the statement.

  Swigert, Lovell, and Fred Haise traveled around the Moon using what became known as a "slingshot" route to return safely to Earth. That path carried them farther from Earth than any other astronauts had been, a record that stood until the Artemis II lunar flyby in 2026. They splashed down on the 17th of April, after about 5 days and 23 hours in space. The following day, the crew received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• 5. The Stamp Scandal

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  After Apollo 13, NASA Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton recommended Swigert as command module pilot for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint mission with the Soviet Union. Slayton's reasoning was direct: Swigert had been picked two days before launch, performed well under extraordinary pressure, and deserved another chance to fly.

  That chance disappeared during the Apollo 15 postal covers investigation in 1972. A number of Apollo astronauts, Swigert among them, had made agreements with West German stamp dealer Hermann Sieger to autograph philatelic items in exchange for payment of about $2,500 each. Sieger had originated the idea for the Apollo 15 covers. When NASA investigators came to Swigert, he initially denied involvement. According to Christopher C. Kraft, investigators then subpoenaed his bank records, where they found more funds than expected along with records of a predated charitable donation. Swigert eventually admitted to the arrangement. NASA Deputy Administrator George M. Low removed him from the Apollo-Soyuz crew. His spaceflight career was effectively finished at forty years old.

• 6. From Orbit to Office

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  Recognizing that his career as an astronaut was most likely over, Swigert took a leave of absence from NASA in April 1973 and went to Washington to serve as executive director of the Committee on Science and Astronautics in the U.S. House of Representatives. He left that post along with NASA entirely in August 1977 to pursue politics directly.

  His first run, for the U.S. Senate from Colorado in 1978, ended with a sound defeat in the Republican primary at the hands of Congressman Bill Armstrong, who was described as far better known. Swigert then became vice president of B.D.M. Corporation in Golden in 1979, and left in 1981 to join International Gold and Minerals Limited as vice president for financial and corporate affairs.

  In February 1982, he left that role to campaign for the newly created 6th congressional district in Colorado. During that campaign, doctors found a malignant tumor in his right nasal passage. Swigert disclosed the diagnosis publicly to voters. Doctors told him radiation treatments would conclude on the 15th of June and that he would make a complete recovery. On the 2nd of November, 1982, he won his congressional seat with 64% of the vote. In August, before the election, he had developed back pain and been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.

• 7. Seven Days Short

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  On the 19th of December, 1982, seven weeks after winning his election, Swigert was airlifted from his home in Littleton, Colorado, to Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. He died of respiratory failure at the hospital's Lombardi Cancer Center on the 27th of December, aged 51. His congressional term was set to begin on the 3rd of January 1983. He missed it by seven days.

  He was the last member-elect of the House to die before taking office until Luke Letlow's death from COVID-19 in December 2020. His funeral in Denver was a full military honors service, presided over by Archbishop James Casey, attended by roughly a thousand mourners. Fifteen astronauts were among them, including Jim Lovell and Fred Haise. A-7 Corsairs from the Colorado Air National Guard performed a missing man flyover. He is buried alongside his parents in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge.

  Following a special election in March 1983, Daniel Schaefer succeeded Swigert as the representative for Colorado's 6th district. In 1997, a statue of Swigert created by George and Mark Lundeen was placed in the U.S. Capitol Building as one of Colorado's two contributions to the National Statuary Hall Collection. A duplicate stands at Denver International Airport Terminal B, near where passengers exit the airport's train system.