Emergency splashdown in the Pacific near Okinawa

Because of the rule requiring an immediate end to the mission after RCS use, the crew had to land more than a day earlier than planned — after just 10 hours, 41 minutes and 26 seconds of flight and six orbits of the Earth.

Splashdown occurred on March 17, 1966, at 03:22:28 UTC in the Pacific Ocean, roughly 800 km east of Okinawa and 1,000 km south of Yokosuka — outside the primary recovery zone. Before a ship arrived, a U.S. Air Force C-54, piloted by Les Schneider, circled the capsule and guided the crew toward rescue vessels.

The destroyer USS Leonard F. Mason reached the capsule, and both the crew and the spacecraft were recovered within three hours of splashdown. Despite the dramatic ordeal, Armstrong and Scott returned unharmed — the handling of the emergency later became one of the reasons Armstrong was chosen to command Apollo 11.