Background:Although the FIDO is nominally and de facto the "leader of the trench" (save, of course, for the Chief of the Flight Dynamics branch), there was most certainly still an unwritten hierarchy that existed within the trench's corps. Jay Greene and Dave Reed were widely (and rightfully) regarded as the most experienced and most skilled FIDOs who got assigned to most if not all of the powered flight duties (liftoff and lunar descent) since they would need to have the confidence and nerves to know whether or not to call an abort. Bill Stoval was the midcourse man, and he oversaw two of the midcourses during Apollo 13 - the SPS GNN midcourse to a hybrid trajectory, and the manual DPS burn midcourse for corridor control. Bill Boone was the other FIDO scheduled to work.
As of the time of Apollo 13, Boone had been in the Flight Dynamics SSR during Apollo 4 and had also been a FIDO in Apollo 7, Apollo 11, and Apollo 12. Glynn Lunney's shift after the accident was intended to have the crew asleep starting at around 60 hours. Instead, at 61:30, they executed the DPS midcourse to free return, and Boone provided the trajectory for this. The original burn would have put them in the middle of Madagascar, until RETRO Tom Weichel asked FIDO to move it off the land into the Indian Ocean.
He had been regarded as a "junior controller". From Ed Pavelka's oral history:
]"In this particular flight we were introducing several new flight controllers, and we actually had dual assignments on some of the shifts. I was with another controller, Bill [William J.] Boone [III], who was a junior controller. So I was on the console with him as his trainer, if you will, or on-the-job training type. Other positions had this, too. So for many of the shifts, Bill would be there, and I would come in with him for the difficult parts or what was more complicated. Actually, during the part of the accident where they discovered it, I was just coming on when the information began to come in."
While Pavelka went to do troubleshooting at the other consoles during Lunney's shift, Bill Stoval and Jerry Bostick provided support for Boone. Later after the PC+2 burn, Jay Greene would act as Boone's "supervisor" on the subsequent shifts, when he himself wasn't pulled away to attend planning meetings.
Description:Boone is now working his back-to-back shift in the MOCR, having been on for the Maroon team (Milt Windler as FLIGHT) shift after the PC+2 burn and now filling in for Dave Reed during the Black team shift. Lunney has now posited to the Trench that in addition to making considerations in selecting a TIG time for the corridor control burn, they now need to factor in weather avoidance with a mild storm in the Mid-Pacific Line area.
FIDO Bill Boone calls up RETRO Chuck Dieterich to discuss weather avoidance. Whether it's due to fatigue, or perhaps overenthusiasm or trying to find something to do, Bill Boone initiates a bizarre exchange on the loops where he declares "we don't have any contraints [on when to do the weather avoidance burn] as long as it's between those two numbers [104 and 118 hours]." This immediately makes Chuck prickly. When Boone holds his ground and declares that he's simply trying to ensure they're both attacking the problem the same way, Chuck replies brusquely "I know what my job is, Bill."
Apparently Chuck was genuinely angry, since he snubs Boone later at 91:54:30. When they do finally get to talking again, Boone apologizes.
Link:
https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=091:46:05&ch=20
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With all the public pressure on Houston as a result of Windler and Weichel's alarming press conference, I have to imagine that being the FIDO on console for a manual course correction burn to get back in the corridor carries a metric ton of responsibility.
