NORTH COUNTY -- Ask anyone old enough to remember where they were 40 years ago today, and they'll probably talk about grainy images on TV, a speechless Walter Cronkite trying to describe what was happening, and those dramatic first words from the moon.

The Eagle had landed.

The first moon landing, seen at the time as the culmination of all of mankind's dreams and efforts, remains one of the most significant events in history. Southern California residents played a major role in the Apollo program, with many engineers working on rockets and other systems at Rockwell International in Downey.

One of those former engineers, Oceanside resident Shelby Jacobs, worked many years on the Apollo program, but doesn't have particularly vivid memories of the Apollo 11 landing of July 20, 1969.

"I believe I probably saw that at home," he said about watching the moon landing.

It's not that Jacobs didn't marvel at the accomplishment. It's just that, having worked in the space program for years, he had come to expect things to go right.

Jacobs, 74, began his career in the space race in 1956, when he worked as an engineer developing the Atlas engine for Project Mercury at Rocketdyne in Canoga Park.

Most of his career was spent designing rocket-propulsion systems for Rockwell, now Boeing, where he worked on the Apollo and space shuttle programs before retiring in 1996.

"It was everyday work," he said. "It was what I did for a living."

While he doesn't romanticize his work, Jacobs does recognize the significance of the Apollo 11 mission. He's not a collector, but still has a medallion emblazoned with "The Eagle Has Landed" as thanks for his work on the mission. He may have received medallions for other missions, but he said he doesn't remember.

"That was the climax of 10 years of effort," he said.

As a young black man entering the engineering field with no role models in the field, Jacobs also saw the Apollo program as both a personal and national triumph.

"In retrospect, I have more awareness of the odds against me even being there at the time," he said. "Personally, as well as the milestone of the mission, it was all significant, because we had done things that had never been done before."

Most of the contributions Jacobs made to the Apollo program were more technical than spectacular, but he did have a direct hand in creating one of the most memorable images of the space program. He designed the camera system that filmed the separation of the first and second stages of Apollo 6, and the shot of the giant ringed spacer slowly tumbling toward Earth has become one of the most iconic scenes of the era.

Jacobs was just one of thousands of Americans who worked in some capacity on the Apollo program throughout the 1960s. Carlsbad resident Jim Gault, 81, worked at North American Aviation from 1953 to 1993 in jobs that included production development and quality control.

"It was the kind of a job where you went home at night and made a list in your mind of what you'd do the next day, and you'd get to work and find out something had happened, and you wouldn't get to what you planned for a couple of days," he said. "Every day was exciting, because there was always something new."

Gault worked directly with astronauts and met Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins of Apollo 11. He doesn't remember much about watching the moon landing on TV, but he clearly remembers what happened at the end of the day when he left the plant.

"We went out and we looked up and saw the moon, and it was hard for us to imagine that we hit it," he said. "We said, 'Look at that. We hit it. We're there.'"

Businesslike approach

John Naranjo, 75, worked in the same Downey plant as Jacobs, although he didn't know him at the time. An Oceanside resident for 11 years before moving to Banning in March, he worked on the navigation system of the command module and often worked directly with astronauts.

Naranjo described Apollo 11 astronauts as businesslike, very knowledgeable and "real cool." He also knew the ill-fated Apollo 1 crew of Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, who died in a fire inside the command module on the launch platform at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

"We felt pretty bad about it," he said.

Naranjo remembered Grissom as a down-to-earth guy who socialized with engineers after work and once yelled at some drunken reporters who were drowning out a comedian's act at a Holiday Inn lounge in Cape Canaveral.

Naranjo also remembers when he and astronaut Jim Lovell got on their hands and knees to pore over a roll of paper stretched down a hallway that contained data related to a problem with the Apollo 8 lunar module.

"They were very interested," he said about the astronauts' curiosity about the mission's mechanics. "They wanted to know the utmost detail."

The job took its toll on engineers, and Naranjo said he sometimes worked the night shift and came home at 10 a.m. He said his long hours at work probably contributed to his marriage falling apart at the time.

"But if I had to do it all over again, I'd do it," he said. "It was very exciting. The Apollo program, I think, was the crowning glory of my engineering career."

As he watched the moon landing, Naranjo said, he was struck by the significance of the event and the role he played in it.

"I remember thinking what an honor and privilege it was to see human beings actually landing on the moon and getting out of the lunar module and walking on the surface," he said. "I felt really proud and felt it was an honor to be part of that occasion."

Call staff writer Gary Warth at 760-740-5410.