Years later when I lived in Cape Canaveral (the town) I became friends with a retired NASA engineer who worked in all the manned space programs through Apollo. He told me the battle between astronauts and engineers over pilot control of the vehicle versus ground control, as depicted in the movie “The Right Stuff” was real. He said on one of the Apollo missions the astronauts failed to switch off the thrusters after reentry. When the parachute deployed and opened the thrusters continued to fire automatically to adjust the attitude of the capsule which was swinging like a pendulum. By the time the crew discovered the problem and switched the thrusters off they had burned through some of the parachute shroud lines. Also the capsule had descended to an altitude where vents had opened allowing fresh air into the capsule. This drew hydrazine, the thruster propellant which is highly poisonous, into the capsule where it was likely inhaled by the crew. He said he heard at the time that these guys would have to be medically monitored for life.
I worked for NASA the summer of 1964, in the valve unit of the Saturn V project as a clerk typist. They were very nice to me, escorted me around to all the training facilities. At the time, they assumed that many men would be killed trying to get to the moon. So, I guess they were surprised that so few died.
The capper was, the capsule ended up in a Stable-Two position i.e. capsule inverted and the astronauts hanging from the straps. Combined with the tetroxide exposure, wave action, and capsule motion, the guys were in rough shape and ended up donning O2 masks. Brand actually passed out. Once everybody was on O2, they activated the recovery balloons and righted the capsule.
Apollo missions were never "smooth as silk", but those guys definitely had the right stuff to handle the rough times with nary a batted eye. (Just don't ask Tom Stafford about his colorful language when he accidentally hit an abort switch in the LM during Apollo 10. :-) )