A year before the Apollo took off, Armstrong had to perform an emergency ejection from a test aircraft while just 200 feet above the ground.
And then, in a sequence worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster, the astronaut floated down to Earth as his machine exploded in a fireball beneath him, the 'Daily Mail' reported.
As Discovery News reports, this brush with death occurred as Armstrong practiced landing the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle.
NASA's 'Drake Group', tasked with planning Armstrong's descent to the Moon, came up with the 'flying bedstead' - an aircraft akin to a helicopter which could perform vertical landings.
In 1968, Armstrong and fellow astronaut-in-training Pete Conrad tested the LLRV. Armstrong was on his 21st flight, on May 6, when disaster struck.
"The test started out normally. Armstrong took off vertically off and rose to an altitude just under 500 feet where he switched the engine into lunar simulation and began the test landing," Discovery News reported.
He descended as though on the Moon, but about 230 feet above the desert floor the LLRV started pitching forward and picking up speed.
Armstrong tried to counter this forward momentum with his attitude control thrusters but they didn't respond. Instead, the vehicle rolled sharply to the right and started losing altitude.
"The vehicle crashed in a field, the fuel still on board starting a fire. It was damaged beyond repair at an estimated cost of half a million dollars," Discovery said.
Armstrong landed by parachute and walked away uninjured in the incident, admitting later that the force of ejecting had caused him to bite his tongue.
When NASA investigated the incident, they realised the error lay with the propellant, which had depleted earlier than normal, causing insufficient pressure to fuel the altitude control rockets.
