SPLASHDOWN! NASA and the Navy By Don Blair (193 pages, photos, drawings, maps) Reviewer:  Terry Miller Overall Rating: Four Stars--Highly recommended. An excellent book. Although it looks like a coffee table book with its glossy cover and oversize format, Don Blair’s SPLASHDOWN! NASA and the Navy is a font of information about the role navy ships, especially destroyers, played in the space missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Because the United States chose to have the spacecraft return to earth at sea, it was imperative that the Navy be involved from the very beginning. Over the fifteen years covered by SPLASHDOWN!, 216 different naval vessels were involved, either as end-mission recovery or downrange launch recovery vessels. Blair lists every mission and every ship with details of the missions and the recovery methods. For each mission, including the ones that were scrubbed, the book shows what ships were assigned to the Atlantic downrange emergency recovery and the Pacific Mission recovery teams. There are anecdotes and copies of official documents, photos of the astronauts and spacecraft and the actual recoveries. There are also brief histories of some of the ships involved. A broadcaster for twenty-five years, Don Blair’s was the voice heard worldwide from USS HORNET during the Apollo 11 Lunar Mission recovery on 24 July 1969. His book is no less noteworthy and is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the United States space program and the Navy's part in it.