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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Jack Swigert

American astronaut and politician (1931–1982)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

John Leonard Swigert Jr. was an American NASA astronaut, test pilot, mechanical engineer, aerospace engineer, United States Air Force pilot, and politician. In April 1970, as command module pilot of Apollo 13, he became one of 24 Apollo astronauts who reached the Moon. Due to the "slingshot" route around the Moon they chose to safely return to Earth, the Apollo 13 astronauts flew farther away from Earth than any other astronauts until the Artemis II lunar flyby in 2026, though they had to abort the Moon landing.

Editorial summary

“Jack Swigert” enters the record as american astronaut and politician (1931–1982). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jack, Swigert and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1970, 2026—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Jack, Swigert and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Jack Swigert” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jack, Swigert and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1970 and 2026.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jack Swigert”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jack Swigert primary sources, Jack Swigert archive and Jack research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jack Swigert”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Jack Swigert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.