Historic Crane that Helped Launch Man to the Moon to Come Down

The crane that scraped the Seal Beach skyline for nearly 50 years as an unintended monument to the ingenuity that sent man to the moon will come down Friday. Though unused for more than a decade, the crane helped shape human history. It was created to build the Saturn V rocket that propelled Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Mounted atop a tall gray corrugated building, it has been little used in recent decades as the aerospace industry shifted focus and locales. The tallest structure in the city, it towers above Seal Beach Boulevard behind the walls of the Naval Weapons Station.

“Constructed in 1966 on the roof of a 100-foot-high former rocket testing building, the crane is considered structurally unsound and a hazard to the Navy personnel working at the base,” Gregg Smith spokesman for the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach said. “The crane was originally designed to lift parts of the second stage of the Saturn V moon rocket built by North American Aviation. It was later used to lift Navy electronic equipment being tested aboard the base. It had not been in use for over a decade.”

Between 1966 and 1973, anyone driving down the boulevard could see the massive rockets that played a key role in the Apollo missions. When the Seal Beach portions of the rockets were completed, transporting them to Florida was a major event.

Too big to pass under the Pacific Coast Highway bridge, the boosters had to be driven down Seal Beach Boulevard to Anaheim Bay so the Navy could ship them through the Panama Canal to Florida, where the Saturn V was assembled for launch. The streetlights had to be put on swivels because the boosters were too big to pass under them.

After taking that first step on the moon, Neil Armstrong later returned to Seal Beach to celebrate the accomplishment with those who helped build the rocket that propelled him.

Armstrong died in 2012. North American Aviation, the company that built the Saturn V is long gone. And now, after 50 years, the crane, too, must go.

Photos: Wikimedia Commons, U.S. Navy and NASA