Apollo 1

Veterans Gus Grissom and Ed White and rookie Roger Chaffee lose their lives-but not in vain

 

PRIME CREW: Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom (Commander)

Edward H. White II (Senior Pilot)

Roger B. Chaffee (Pilot)

Backup Crew: Walter M. "Wally" Schirra, Jr. (Commander)

Donn F. Eisele (Senior Pilot)

Ronnie Walter "Walt" Cunningham (Pilot)

January 27, 1967

PRIME CREW KILLED IN FIRE

 

 

 

The Prime Crew of  Apollo 1 (Apollo/Saturn 204) pose at Launch Complex 34; their Saturn IB booster and Apollo CSM are contained in the service structure behind them. L-R, Commander Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger Chaffee. Gus, of course, was one of the Original 7. He was the second American in space, and also commanded Gemini 3. Ed White, one of the New 9, was the first American to walk in space on Gemini 4. Roger Chaffee was a Purdue grad and Naval Aviator. While stationed at NAS Jacksonville, FL, flying big A3D Skywarriors ("Whales") with VAP-62, one of his missions had been to photograph Cape Canaveral for NASA. Later, he and his squadronmates flew dangerous reconnaissance missions over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The following year, Roger was selected for astronaut training. It's been 4 years, but he is finally preparing for his first mission. This photo was taken on Jan. 17, 1967. NASA Photo.

 

Roger, Ed and Gus spent many hours in the Command Module simulators in Houston, at the North American plant in Downey, CA, and the Cape. The Apollo CSM was the most complex spacecraft yet, and there were reams of new procedures to learn. Like any new aircraft or spacecraft, there were plenty of bugs to be worked out. NASA Photo.

 

 

Apollo 1-CSM #012; the Command Module is shown at Downey during construction in April, 1966. North American technicians are seen here preparing to install the heat shield. NASA Photo.

 

   

Months later, much of #012's systems were in place when Gus Grissom flew in to check on the progress of the spacecraft. Here, he sits in the Commander's couch while going over the instrument panels and controls with a North American technician. NASA Photo.

 

 

The components began to arrive at KSC in the summer of 1966. Here, the first stage of the Saturn IB arrives by barge from Michaud on Aug. 15th. NASA Photo.

 

 

CSM #012 arrived at the Cape and was mated to the Service Module. Gus, Ed, and Roger participated in many engineering meetings as the spacecraft was being built, and knew what was going into it. They didn't like some of the things they saw, and asked for changes. They were not at all happy when #012 arrived at the Cape with many of those changes yet to be made. The spacecraft had thousands of bugs that needed to be worked out. They were shooting for a launch in the first quarter of 1967, and that target was starting to look unrealistic-but NASA and North American were working hard. NASA Photo.

 

 

Jan. 6, 1967: CSM #012 is hoisted up at Pad 34 to be mated with the Saturn IB. The Vehicle Assembly Building was not used for this mission-the facility was busy getting the first Saturn V test vehicles ready. Like Gemini and Mercury vehicles of previous programs, Apollo 1 was erected on the pad. NASA Photo.

 

Jan. 27, 1967: Gus (leading) and Roger walk across an access arm to the White Room on Pad 34 to board the spacecraft for a "plugs-out" test. For this test the vehicle will be completely unplugged from the launch tower and run on internal power, and they will do everything during the count except actually launch. There have been many glitches in numerous systems in both the spacecraft and the simulators-so many, in fact, that when Gus arrived at the Cape on the 22nd, he hung a big Texas lemon on the simulator. NASA Photo.

The test went on all day and into the evening, with one problem after another. Gus, Ed, and Roger were sealed into the CM with the hatch closed, wearing their suits and helmets, just as during an actual launch. To test the pressurization system, technicians had to simulate the pressure differential between the atmosphere inside the spacecraft and the vacuum of space. To do this on the ground, they had to pressurize the cabin with 100% oxygen to a level much higher than that of the air outside. While the atmosphere in the spacecraft would only be pressurized to 5 psi in space, today they had it up around 16.7 psi. Soon, Gus noted that there was a nasty odor in his oxygen loop, and that had to be fixed.

As the clock crept past 6:00 PM and headed through the first half of the hour, there were more problems. This time, it was communications. There was a loop established between the Command Module, the Pad 34 blockhouse, the Launch Control Center, and Mission Control in Houston. There was a lot of static. Gus couldn't make out some transmissions at all. Finally, he said, "How are we going to go to the moon if we can't communicate between buildings?" Stu Roosa in the blockhouse couldn't hear him, and said, "Apollo 1, say again."

"I can't hear a word you're saying," Gus said in disgust. "Jesus Christ. I said, how are we going to go to the moon if we can't even communicate between two or three buildings?!?"

There was yet another hold while they worked on the communications problems. It was just past 6:30.

Moments later, a cry was heard over the radio that would shake the space program and the nation:

"We've got a fire in the cockpit!"

 

By the time the pad crew and firemen could get the hatch open, it was too late. Gus, Ed, and Roger were dead. There was some small solace when the autopsies revealed that they didn't burn to death-the space suits had protected them from that, as they had been designed to do. However, the fire had burned through their oxygen hoses. They had asphyxiated. NASA Photo.

 

The commission appointed to investigate the fire determined that its cause was faulty wiring in the Command Module, and that it was fueled by the 100% oxygen environment. The investigators also pointed out that the hatch, which took 90 laborious seconds to open under the best conditions, would have been impossible to open by the crew-it opened inward, and because of the extreme pressure in the spacecraft cabin (made worse by the fire), there was no way anyone would have been able to pull the hatch open from inside. Not even Ed White, said to be the strongest astronaut in the corps. As a result, the hatch and many other systems were changed, and many more quality-control systems were put in place both at North American and NASA. NASA Photo.

 

 

"I think you have to understand the feeling that a pilot has, that a test pilot has, that I look forward a great deal to making the first flight. There's a great deal of pride involved in making a first flight." -Ed White (The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1967)

 

 

"You'll be flying along some nights with a full moon. You're up at 45,000 feet. Up there you can see it like you can't see it down here. It's just the big, bright, clear moon. You look up there and just say to yourself: I've got to get up there. I've just got to get one of those flights."
-Roger Chaffee (The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1967)

 

 

"If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
-Gus Grissom (John Barbour et al., Footprints on the Moon, The Associated Press, 1969)

Gus Grissom & Roger Chaffee are buried at Arlington National Cemetary.

Ed White is buried at his alma mater, West Point, on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River.

 

  IN MEMORIAM

VIRGIL I. "GUS" GRISSOM 

MERCURY-REDSTONE 4/LIBERTY BELL 7, GEMINI 3/MOLLY BROWN

1926-1967

 

EDWARD H. WHITE II

GEMINI 4; FIRST AMERICAN TO WALK IN SPACE

1930-1967

 

ROGER B. CHAFFEE 

1935-1967