FIRE AT THE CAPE

1/27/1967 - Setting the quest to put men on the moon back by months, death finally finds the United States' space program, when practicing for the first Apollo space launch at the Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 in Florida, fire from a faulty wire flashes through the command module being used and kills astronauts Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (the 40-year-old Command Pilot of the mission, husband of Betty Lavonne Moore and father to two sons,     Scott and Mark), Edward Higgins White II (the 36-year-old Senior Pilot of the mission, husband of Patricia Eileen Finegan and father to a son, Edward White III, and a daughter, Bonnie Lynn), and Roger Bruce Chaffee (the 31-year-old Pilot of the mission, husband of Mary Louise Horn and father to a daughter, Sheryl Lyn, and a son, Stephen).    

Grissom, White, And Chaffee

Suddenly in a space race with the Soviet Union when communist Russia sends a satellite overhead with their launching of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, challenged by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to put Americans on the moon before the end of the decade (he announces the plan in an outdoor speech he gives at Rice Stadium on the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas to an audience of 40,000 on September 12, 1962), the United States begins a massive three-part program to reach the moon.  Phase One, Mercury, consists of twenty uncrewed developmental flights (some with animals) and six successful one pilot (the seven astronauts selected all come from the military ... scheduled for flight #2, Army Air Force flier is taken off flight status when two months before his mission, he is discovered to have irregularities in his heartbeat called idiopathic atrial fibrillation) rides into space aboard the Mercury capsule designed by McDonnell Aircraft with the end goal of obtaining multiple orbits of the earth, while bringing back all the explorers alive.  Costing $2,27 billion (adjusted for inflation), the Mercury Program ends on May 16, 1963, when personnel of the United States Navy aircraft carrier, USS Kearsarge, plucks astronaut Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper and his space capsule, Faith 7, out of the Pacific waters southeast of Midway Island that lasts 34 hours, 19 minutes, and 49 seconds while orbiting the earth 22 times.

The Rice University Speech

First Hominid Into Space - Ham The Astrochimp

The Seven - Left To Right - Grissom, Shepard, Carpenter,

Schirra, Slayton, Glen, And Cooper

Faith 7 Launch

Faith 7 Pickup

Gordon's Ticker-Tape Parade Through

New York City - 5/22/1963

Phase Two to the push for the moon is the Gemini Program featuring a larger capsule, a longer period of time in space (enough to make the trip to the moon and back with extra time incorporated for emergencies), extra-vehicular activity (EVA), practice of the docking techniques and orbital maneuvers required to couple with another spacecraft, use of a more powerful launch vehicle in the Geminin-Titan II missile, and mission guidance coming from the new Mission Control Center of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas.  For Gemini, coordinated by Deke Slayton, now the Director of Flight Crew Operations, there is now a pool of 22 astronauts, 16 of whom will fly in ten manned missions in which Ed White becomes the first American to spacewalk (Gemini 4, White is outside for 22 minutes), the first rendezvous between two capsules (Gemini 6 & 7) takes place, a 14-day endurance record for space flight is set (Gemini 7), the first docking of the a Gemini capsule to an unmanned Agena target vehicle takes place (Gemini 8, which also features the first emergency landing of manned space capsule), set a crewed Earth orbital altitude record of 739.2 nautical miles (Gemini 11), and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin sets an EVA record with 5 hours and 30 minutes for one spacewalk and two stand-up exercise experiments (Gemini 12).  In motion from 1965 to 1966, the Gemini Project costs the United States $1.3 billion (with inflation factored in, $7.76 billion in 2019 dollars).  Project goals accomplished, the quest for the moon does lose NASA its first three pilots in air mishaps not involved with space travel ... 34-year-old Theodore Cordy "Ted" Freeman on October 31, 1964 when on preparing to land a NASA Northrup T-38 Talon at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas, the jet is hit by a goose, causing its engine to flameout, and when Freeman bails out of the jet, he is too low for his parachute to engage, 38-year-old Elliot McKay See Jr and 34-year-old Charles Arthur Bassett on February 28, 1966, when the T-38 Talon that See is piloting crashes into the McDonnell Aircraft building (where the capsule for See's and Bassett's Gemini 9 flight is being assembled) at Lambert Field in St. Louis, Missouri during a foggy day.    

Gemini Capsule

Ed White Walks In Space

First Docking

Gemini 12 Recovery 

The three men originally chosen to kick off the third phase of the race to the moon belong to all three of the first recruitments of astronauts.  Grissom is one of the original seven Mercury pilots, coming to the space program as a decorated veteran fighter pilot of the Korean War and the first American to go into space twice.  White is a member of the select group of men that become the United States second batch of astronauts under the moniker of the "New Nine," and is an Army veteran with over 3,000 hours of flight time in planes and jets (and the first American to spacewalk).  A member of the third group of fliers to be selected to be spacemen, selected to be the mission's pilot is Donn Fulton Eisele, a 36-year-old Air Force test pilot with a Master of Science degree in Astronautics from the United States Air Force Institute of Technology at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.  As training for the mission is beginning however, Eisele dislocates his shoulder twice (Eisele will eventually fly as part of the crew of Apollo 7 in 1968) training for weightlessness in a KC135 aircraft, injuries that require surgery, and is replaced on the mission by Chaffee, also a member of the third group of Americans to become astronauts, he is naval officer and aviator (along with being a former Eagle Scout with bronze and gold palm merit badges), along with obtaining a aeronautical engineering degree from Purdue University.   

Chaffee, White, And Grissom In The Capsule

Eisele

Training intensifying as the mission closes in on its scheduled launch date of February 21, 1967 (it is planned to last up to two weeks depending on how the capsule performs), the flight's new three-man spacecraft ships from North American Aviation (the company that produced the P-51 Mustang fighter during WWII) to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 26, 1966, but the capsule is far from ready to fly; conditional Certificate of Flight Worthiness also received, the capsule has 113 significant incomplete planned engineering changes and 623 additional engineering changes to be incorporated after receipt.  It is also filled with flammable material in the form of nylon netting and Velcro that technicians and the astronauts use for holding tools and equipment in place as they ready the spacecraft.  As if they somehow have a sense of what's coming, Grissom tapes a lemon to the flight simulator the crew is using, and with their complaints about the flammable material, the crew sends Apollo Spacecraft Program Office head, Joseph F. Shea a picture of the men praying for their safety to a higher authority.  Testing, testing, and more testing by both the flight team and their backups, engineers soon find a design flaw in the environmental control unit of the command module which requires the unit being sent back to the manufacturer for redesign and rework.  Once back, it is discovered that the ECU leaks water/glycol coolant, and the piece has to be pulled again and sent back for even more adjusting.  At roughly the same time, a ruptured propellant tank is discovered and replaced.  Known hardware issues resolved, the spacecraft finally completes it's altitude chamber tests on December 30, 1966 (under the guidance of the mission's backup crew).  Successfully tested, the spacecraft is married to it's Saturn IB launch missile at Pad 34 of Cape Kennedy on January 6, 1967. 

Receipt

White, Grissom, And White Pray

Shea

Testing

On January 27, 1967, the first team crew is scheduled to run a "plugs out" launch simulation to determine if the capsule will operate on internal power, detached from all cables and umbilicals.  As the test does not include the rocket or spacecraft being loaded with fuel or cryogenics, and all explosive bolts are disabled, the checkout is mistakenly considered to be non-hazardous.  At 1:00 in the afternoon, wearing their fully pressurized space suits, first Grissom, then White, and then Chaffee are helped into the capsule, strapped into their seats by technicians and connected to the capsule's oxygen and communication systems.  Almost immediately, Grissom complains of a "sour buttermilk" smell in his spacesuit and the countdown is stopped at 1:20 to analyze the problem.  No cause found and the smell not thought to be a problem (the investigation after the fire will determine that the smell had nothing to do with the conflagration), the countdown resumes at 2:42 pm.  Three minutes later, hatch installation begins (the capsule hatches consist of three pieces ... a removable inner hatch that stays inside the capsule, a hinged outer hatch that is part of the spacecraft's heat shield, and an outer hatch cover that is part of the craft's protective cover, preventing the capsule from being damaged by aerodynamic heating during launch and from the launch rocket escape exhausts should there be an emergency abort.  Hatches on, the cabin is then pressurized by pure oxygen.  The next problem discovered is that the microphone in Grissom's spacesuit is stuck in its on position and that the Operations and Checkout Building, the Complex 34 blockhouse control room, and the capsule are all having difficulty communicating with each other, which stops the countdown once more at 5:40 pm and prompts Grissom to sarcastically state, "How are we going to the Moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings?"  Problem resolved by 6:20 in the early evening, the countdown is still at T minus ten minutes at 6:30 pm when a momentary increase in the AC Bus 2 voltage takes place, and nine seconds later Grissom exclaims, "Hey!  Fire!"  Two seconds later, Chaffee states, "We've got a fire in the cockpit!"  The message is followed by 6.8 seconds of silence, then the last message from inside the capsule is received from Chaffee, "They're fighting a bad fire.  Let's get out, open her up!"  Five seconds of information that is followed by a cry of pain and then silence.  A holocaust in seconds feed by the pure oxygen, the flames         spread left to right through the cabin and rupture the inner wall of the command module at 6:31 pm.  Freed by the rupture, flames and gases escape over two levels of the pad service structure (it is feared that the fire could ignite the solid rocket fuel in the launch escape tower above the command module, killing all the test personnel and destroying Pad 34) filling the area with extreme heat and dense smoke that hampers the rescue efforts of the technicians surrounding the capsule (it does not help that available are for toxic gases, not heavy smoke).  Too late, it takes rescuers five minutes to get through the three hatch levels ... dead from cardiac arrest brought on by carbon monoxide asphyxiation (most of the burns on the bodies are post-mortem), Grissom manages to remove his restraints and get out of his seat before he succumbs to the gas and collapses to the floor of the capsule (the veteran spaceman suffers third-degree burns to his body and his spacesuit is almost totally destroyed), White perishes beneath the hatch he couldn't open due to the internal pressure on the opening created by the fire (White suffers third-degree burns over almost half of his body and has a quarter of his spacesuit melt away, and Chaffee is found still strapped into his seat, following procedure with him keeping line of communications open within the capsule until the hatch is fully opened (White suffers third-degree burns over almost a quarter of his body and has a small potion of his spacesuit damaged).  Because the intense heat has melted the spacesuits and nylon meshing, it takes rescue personnel ninety minutes to remove the bodies from the capsule.

The Cockpit After

Outside Of The Capsule

Time Magazine

After, in the search of answers to why, President Lyndon B. Johnson allows NASA to investigate itself by means of a small team of experts that includes NASA Deputy Administrator Robert Seamens, Langley Research Center Director Floyd L. Thompson, astronaut Frank Borman, spacecraft designer Maxime Faget, and Dr. Robert W. Van Dolah of the U.S. Bureau of Mines.  Manned flights shut down for 20 months, using an identical capsule for guidance, the team has the death capsule disassembled and looks at every part used, the autopsy results for each astronaut are examined and analyzed, and surviving witnesses are interviewed.  On April 5, 1967 the board released its final report and recommendations.   Among the report's findings are that no single source of the starting spark can be found but appeared to come from power being applied to wires that had become abraded lost portions of their Teflon insulation during earlier tests, with the weak point in the wiring being near a cooling line prone to leaks which were capable of causing a violent exothermic reaction in the pure oxygen of the capsule, 34 square feet of flammable Velcro is found to have been in the cockpit at the time of the fire ... removed in response to the astronauts' complaints to Joseph Shea, it was replaced before the capsule was delivered to Cape Kennedy in August, and the hatches are deemed to be less than adequate for emergency escapes (meanwhile, the politicians in Congress get involved and there are hearings about what happened and whether the government should keep funding the space program involving Democrat Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, Democrat Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, Republican Senator Edward W. Brooke III of Massachusetts, and Republican Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois).  Pound of flesh required, anger is directed at North American Aviation President John Leland Atwood and North American Aviation's Chief Engineer, Harrison Allen Storms Jr. ... neither man willing to resign, Atwood fires Storms, then goes on with his business, eventually going on to partner with Willard Rockwell in forming North American Rockwell in 1967 (Atwood will become the first President and CEO of the new company).  At NASA, most of the spotlight of infamy falls on Shea, who responds poorly to the tragedy by taking barbiturates and drinking excessively to the point where he is asked to take a leave of absence.  Refusing the leave, and threatening to resign (with all the inherent controversy such a move would entail), he is sent to a psychiatrist who can't make any headway in getting Shea to stop blaming himself for the three deaths.  Finally, six months after the tragedy takes place, Shea is given a "promotion" to NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., but quits two months later claiming his new post is a non-job meant to just get him out of the public eye and beyond the reach of potentially embarrassing questions.  He never testifies to anyone of what he knows about the tragedy, goes on to become an executive with Raytheon, and dies at the age of 73 on Valentine's Day of 1999 in Massachusetts, survived by his wife, Carol, six daughters, and a son (after being used in the investigation, the Apollo 1 command module is placed in secured storage warehouse at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia where it remains until February 17, 2007, when it is moved 90 feet into a newer, environmentally controlled warehouse where it remains to this day, though there are suggestions it be buried in concrete at the Pad 34 launch pad).    

Atwood

Storms

Shea & Grissom

Deaths not in vain, NASA uses the problems identified by the fire's outbreak to make improvements to the Apollo program; the location of wiring in the capsule is changed and the wiring changes from silver plated to copper only or nickel-plated copper, the pure oxygen atmosphere and internal pressure within the capsule are both modified, the flammable Velcro within the capsule is removed and the nylon on the astronaut's spacesuits is replaced by non-flammable, melt resistant Beta cloth woven from fiberglass and coated with Teflon, the hatch system for entering and exiting the spacecraft is redesigned so that the hatches open outward, the explosive bolts are replaced by a mechanical opening system, and in the case of emergencies, a cartridge of pressurized nitrogen so that the spacecraft can be opened in no more than five seconds, plumbing and wiring are covered with protective insulation, and aluminum tubing is replaced where possible with stainless steel tubed with brazed joints, a thorough list of protocols is implemented documenting the construction of the spacecraft and its maintenance, and emergency preparedness is modified so that the correct emergency equipment is always available during testing, as are fire, rescue, and medical teams, and the spacecraft work and access areas are modified to make them easier to maneuver through by hurrying personnel, wherever possible, getting rid of steps, sliding doors, and sharp turns.  Changes made and four crewed missions successfully flown and its members brought home, on Wednesday, July 16, 1969, with command module pilot, Michael Collins, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and Commander Neil Armstrong all aboard, Apollo 11 blasts off from Cape Kennedy at 1:32 in the afternoon, bound for the Moon (all the men are Gemini veterans on their last spaceflight).  Four days later, on Sunday, 7/20/1969, the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle will land at a site on the Moon forever after known as Tranquility Base where Armstrong and Aldrin spend 21 hours and 36 minutes walking about the Sea of Tranquility, conducting experiments, and collecting 47.5 pounds of lunar material before rejoining Collins aboard the Command Module Columbia for their return journey to Earth.  President Kennedy's challenge successfully accomplished, the three men and their space capsule are pulled out of the Pacific seas east of Wake Island by personnel aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (commanded by Captain Carl J. Seiberlich out of her home port of Long Beach, California) on Thursday, January 24, 1969.

Aldrin On The Moon

Armstrong On The Moon

Collins On Columbia

Recovery

Heroes in life and heroes in death, Grissom and Chaffee are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia before mourners that include President Lyndon B. Johnson, fellow NASA astronauts, members of the U.S. Congress, and family, while per the wishes in his will, while White is buried with full military honors at the West Point Military Academy cemetery.  Tributes to the men begin almost immediately after their deaths.  When Congress authorizes creation of a Space Mirror Memorial showing the names of astronauts who have died in the line duty, the names Grissom, White, and Chaffee are all honored on the 42.5 feet high by 50 feet wide polished black granite at the John F. Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida.  Grissom is inducted into International Space Hall of Fame in 1981 and also becomes a member of the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1987, and a place at the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990.  His name, and those of White and Chaffee are on a plaque left on the moon in 1971 by the crew of Apollo 15 (along with a small statue named "Fallen Astronaut"), a 44-foot tall memorial goes up in downtown Mitchell, Indiana in 1981 (Grissom's birthplace), there are over a dozen lecture halls and schools across the country named after the fallen astronaut (along with countless streets), there is a memorial in the Spring Mill State Park in Indiana (where a museum in his honor is dedicated by Governor Edgar Whitcomb in 1971 ... the state of Indiana also has an annual thoroughbred horse race it calls the Gus Grissom Stakes), a Virgil "Gus" Grissom Park opens in 1971 in Fullerton, California with a tree planting ceremony (White and Chaffee will also get parks in Fullerton), there is now a Gus Grissom crater on the far side of the moon, officially designated in 1981, a asteroid belt gets the name 2161 Grissom (referencing the launch date of Grissom's Mercury flight on July 21, 1961), and there is now a Grissom Hill on the planet Mars (along with White and Chaffee Hills), and at the United States Air Force Academy, the Class of 2007 selects Grissom to be it's Class Exemplar.

Indiana Tribute To Grissom

Fullerton, California

White and Chaffee receive most of the same honors Grissom is awarded, and for them too, there are schools (born in San Antonio, Texas, there are currently five schools named for White), streets, military bases, and buildings bearing their names that spring up after the 1967 tragedy.  Additionally, the star Iofa Ursae Majoris is nicknamed "Dnoces" (SECOND spelled backwards for Edward Higgins White the Second) for White, a photograph of White's spacewalk is part of the gold record that accompanies both of the Voyager spacecraft sent into space in 1977, eight months after his death, in September of 1967, the United States Post Office issues a two-piece postage stamp commemorating his spacewalk, and the model of wristwatch he wore on his spacewalk, an Omega Speedmaster, is now called the "Ed White" in the astronaut's honor.  For Chaffee, his special personal honor is having the Roger B. Chaffee scholarship set up in 1967 to go annually to exceptional high school seniors of the Kent Intermediate School District pursuing careers in math and science, and in 2018, the unveiling of a life-size statue of the flier standing outside the Grand Rapids Children's Museum in the astronaut's hometown (there will also be a Roger  B. Chaffee Planetarium in Grand Rapids and on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," a 24th century spacecraft is named in Chaffee's honor).

White Postage Stamp

The "Ed White"

Island Chaffee

Chaffee Statue

And as a threesome, the men all get oil drilling artificial islands built off Long Beach, California named in their honor, and at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, along NASA's Astronaut Memorial Grove, a tree is planted for each of the fallen pilots (tours of the space center now pause there for a moment of silence).  At Launch Complex 34, after the successful launch of Apollo 7, the site is dismantled down to the concrete launch pedestal after Apollo 7 blasts off from the site on October 11, 1968 (each year, on the anniversary of the tragedy, the families of the Apollo 1 crew are invited to the site for a memorial honoring the astronauts).  The launch pad now bears two tribute plaques to Apollo 1, one names the men and states, "They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier.  Remember them not for how they died, but for those ideals for which they lived, while the other reads, "IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO MADE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE SO OTHERS COULD REACH THE STARS - AS ASTRA PER ASPERA (A ROUGH ROAD LEADS TO THE STARS) - GOD SPEED TO THE CREW OF APOLLO 1" (built and paid for by a college classmate of one of the fallen astronauts, there are now three reflective granite benches at the site that go up in January of 2005 on the southern edge of the pad, each bearing the name of one of the men and their military service records).  President Jimmy Carter awards a Congressional Space Medal of Honor posthumously to Grissom's family on October 1, 1978, and President Bill Clinton does the same for White and Chaffee on December 17, 1997 (I have no idea why almost two decades went by before the other men received the honor), and all the men get posthumous NASA Distinguished Service medals (the third for Grissom, the second for both White and Chaffee).

Once Upon A Time

Pad 34

The Benches

Memorial

Perhaps the most meaningful tribute though to the fallen astronauts comes from the crew of Apollo 11, the fliers Grissom, White, and Chaffee sacrificed so much for that they might succeed later ... near where the Eagle landed on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility Armstrong and Aldrin leave behind the mission patch of Apollo 1.  God Speed, Lt. Colonel Grissom, Lt. Colonel White, and Commander Chaffee, may the United States always be served gallantly by men of your bravery and mettle.

The Patch

Bottom To Top - Grissom, White, And Chaffee