Fire on Pad 34-A: The Tragic Death of the Apollo 1 Crew

 

by Joshua Noble Hammitt

for Literary Nonfiction, ETSU  Fall 2005

 

On July 20th, 1969, the United States achieved one of the greatest feats in the history of mankind by landing on the moon.  However, NASA and the United States as a whole would never have achieved this goal had it not been for the sacrifices of three brave and heroic astronauts that two years earlier had died for their country’s efforts.  Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Roger B. Chaffee, and Edward H. White, II were the astronauts that wanted to fulfill the dreams, ambitions, and expectations of one of America’s greatest presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy by helping to put a man on the moon before 1970.

On January 27th, 1967, the three astronauts were perched on their backs in an Apollo space capsule atop a Saturn 1B rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, training for a mission with an expected launch date of February 21st.  This is the story of how that one day dealt a horrific blow to the manned spaceflight program.  It was a sad and tragic end to three astronauts, yet to the men and women who fly into space today, Grissom, White, and Chaffee are the heroes that helped man to conquer space further.

Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom was the forty year old commander of Apollo 204 which was later renamed Apollo 1.  Grissom was an original member of America’s first astronauts under the famed Mercury 7 program.  It was during this program that he became the second American astronaut to fly into space on July 21, 1961.  He later flew under the Gemini program.  Thirty-six year old Edward H. White, II had previously been the first American to walk in space during Gemini IV three years earlier.  Last but not least was the venerable and eager Roger B. Chaffee, a thirty-one year old rookie who wanted to have his chance to fly a mission into space.

So how did these three men die?  Some say superstition, and pilots and astronauts are no exception to the rule.  Many people believe in luck, and this is no truer than during World War II when pilots and bomber crews did many crazy things before flying on a combat mission.  Why, because they didn’t want to buy the farm.  This is how airmen have always described dying from an airplane.  Airmen would wear religious medallions or carried four-leaf clovers and rabbits feet.  Pilots were notorious for kissing their planes and painting them with a raunchy pin-up of a gorgeous woman in the hopes that their crews would come home alive.  These same men also believed in bad luck.  So much that they seemed to think it had a habit of rubbing itself onto others and forming at the most awkward times.  Did the astronauts feel this way, it may be never known, but it seems as if Gus Grissom thought something of luck because the first sign that things could go wrong happened at his house in Clear Lake, Texas on January 22nd.

Gus was packing his things and getting ready to leave for Cape Kennedy.  Betty Grissom wrote in her book Starfall that her husband “went out in the courtyard and pulled a lemon off our tree.  It was a Texas lemon, really as big as a grapefruit.  ‘What are you going to do with the lemon?’ Betty asked.  ‘I’m going to hang it on that spacecraft,’ Gus said grimly and kissed her good-bye.”[1]  Unknown to both of them, this would be the last time they saw each other.

For historical sake, it should be known that American Indians would hang lemons on trees because they supposedly warded off evil sprits.  The American Indians considered lemons to be an unappealing and very sour fruit.  Why Gus Grissom wanted to hang a lemon over the side of his spacecraft was beyond anyone’s knowledge.  Even if you know nothing about lemons warding off evil spirits, it just doesn’t seem right to hang one off the side of a spacecraft, much less anything else.  It’s almost like a bad omen or a preface of horrible things to come at a later time.

Roger Chaffee was the rookie astronaut, and it was his duty “to maintain communications with the blockhouse as the test proceeded.  The test was an extensive one that would drag on for hours so that the spacecraft could be evaluated, system by system and procedure by procedure.  The job was a tough one that included numerous tedious, exacting, and frustrating tasks.  Yet Chaffee's personal philosophy and professional training had prepared him for exactly this sort of job.”[2]  Chaffee was preparing to go on his first space mission, something he wanted very dearly to do.  Roger Chaffee wanted more than anything to bear the elite title of astronaut by traveling through the vacuum of space.  With Chaffee in control of the communication systems, he alone could make or break the mission.

On January 27th, 1967, nothing seemed to go right, especially in the realm of communications.  “One persistent frustration that afternoon had been poor quality radio communications, excessive static, and faulty connections between the spacecraft and outside world.”[3]  The command pilot was Gus Grissom, and later that afternoon, he was so frustrated about the entire situation that he had enough and said “How do you expect to get us to the moon if you people can’t even hook us up with the ground station?  Get with it out there!”[4]

After everything else was finished, the last thing on the agenda before anyone could leave for the weekend was to practice escaping from the spacecraft.  This was absolutely necessary because if an emergency happened, the astronauts needed to know how to get out.  NASA stated that even though “the well-trained crew had practiced the egress drill numerous times, they never had managed to perform the duty within the ninety second recommended time frame.”[5]  Little did the astronauts know, but an emergency would soon take place, and they would desperately need to know how to get out so their lives would be spared from the dangers that lurked within.

“Then, at 6:31 p.m. EST, it happened.  Whoosh: ‘Fire in the spacecraft!’ an astronaut shouted over the communications hookup between the spacecraft and blockhouse.  On the TV monitor, the men in the blockhouse simultaneously saw the capsule obscured in a flash of fire and smoke.  It was over in an instant.  The atmosphere of the cabin was pure 100 percent oxygen—five times the concentration of the atmosphere at sea level, and under pressure as well.  With a great whoosh, like the sound of an oven being lit, the pure oxygen in the cabin made every combustible item in the ship burn with super intensity.  At the same time, no oxygen was left to breathe.”[6]

All three astronauts died in the fire due to the noxious fumes and the intake of carbon monoxide which was created when everything inside the capsule burned and melted.  They died a painful and horrific death, and not one person could help them until it was too late.  The fire was so strong and hot that paint on the outside of the capsule was blistered and flaked off.  Had the crew been able to escape in the required ninety second timeframe, it would not have mattered because with a cabin of pure oxygen under pressure, it aided the fire by burning everything in the spacecraft almost instantaneously.

  Under the direction of Dr. Floyd L. Thompson, a seven team NASA investigation from the Langley Research Center reported that faulty wiring was the main cause of the fire.  Somewhere along the line, some insulation was scraped off and a spark ignited flammable material in the cabin.  Since the Apollo 1 tragedy, one-hundred percent oxygen is no longer used in space flights, electrical wiring in space cabins were totally reconfigured and checked for accuracy, escaping the tight spacecraft was made easier, and construction contracts on spacecraft were corrected.  The report specifically recommended that modifications be made to the engineering of the spacecraft and its design.  Recommendations were also concerned with the manufacturing processes, procedures, and quality control.

Of all the astronauts, Roger Chaffee proved “himself most worthy of the title of ‘astronaut’, not by flying in space, but by choosing to remain strapped into his couch, attempting to transmit emergency messages to the Blockhouse while fire raged mercilessly throughout the Apollo 1 spacecraft.”[7]  He was the rookie that never flew into space.

“Put these astronauts high on the list of the men who really count.”[8]  They believed in each other, the cause of the Apollo program, and all three of them had the will and courage to back it up.  They had the “presumption to believe the earth was mostly a marvelous launching platform, a great place to leave for an adventure.”[9]  Think about how “they were always willing to force themselves past the point of danger and deep fatigue to perfect their understanding of the machines they flew.  It is the coldest sort of irony that they must have known instantly the exact nature of the monstrous mistake that killed them.”[10]

Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom and Roger B. Chaffee were buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia while Edward H. White, II was buried at his alma mater, the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.  These three men are the true definition of hero because they made the ultimate sacrifice so others could conquer space further.  Every time I look at the moon, I can’t help but think about Grissom, White, and Chaffee, the three astronauts that never had a chance to plant their feet on the surface of the moon.

Bibliographical Essay

I have always been interested in the space program, especially the Project Mercury years of 1959 through 1963.  The Apollo 1 tragedy has always been close to my heart because no one ever really thinks about the sacrifices that those three brave men endured in order for the landing on the moon to take place.  Although I had not been born, my parents and grandparents remember the incident quite vividly.  As I got older, I inquired about it and my family told me how they felt on that day when the tragedy occurred.  With the way they spoke and said things, it was almost like I went back in time, watching the black and white television when the accident occurred.

When finding sources, I knew the first source would be Betty Grissom’s Starfall.  She wrote this biography as a tribute to her late husband, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom.  I personally fell in love with Starfall and felt that it was a very compelling and well written book that documented and justified the facts.

NASA has a wonderful online research and historical database that has an enormous and vast amount of information on the history of NASA, space missions, satellites, and astronaut biographies from the past to the present.  Some missions, like Apollo 1, go into a very detailed synopsis of everything ranging from the history all the way to the investigation.  I had to pull articles from the major magazines of the period, especially Life and Newsweek because of their immense details, photographs, tributes, and because it was the front-page news of the day.  I have always wanted to write a paper on the men of Apollo 1, and I feel that the sources I used were adequate and set the record straight.

Bibliography

“Fire In The Spacecraft.”  Newsweek Magazine, 6 February 1967, 25.

 

Grissom, Betty and Still, Henry.  Starfall.  New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1974.

 

Morse, Ralph.  “Put Them High On The List of Men Who Count.” Life Magazine, 6 February

1967, 18.

 

NASA History Database, “Detailed Biographies of Apollo I Crew - Roger Chaffee.” 

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/zorn/chaffee.htm  (Accessed September 14th, 2005).

 

NASA History Database. “Detailed Biographies of Apollo I Crew - Ed White.” 

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/zorn/white.htm  (Accessed September 14th, 2005).


[1]               Betty Grissom and Henry Still, Starfall (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1974), 182.

[2]               NASA History Database, “Detailed Biographies of Apollo I Crew - Roger Chaffee.”  http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/zorn/chaffee.htm  (Accessed September 14th, 2005).

 

[3]               Betty Grissom and Henry Still, Starfall (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1974), 3.

 

[4]               Ibid., 3.

 

[5]               NASA History Database, “Detailed Biographies of Apollo I Crew - Ed White.”  http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/zorn/white.htm  (Accessed September 14th, 2005).

[6]               “Fire In The Spacecraft,” Newsweek Magazine, 6 February 1967, 25.

[7]               NASA History Database, “Detailed Biographies of Apollo I Crew - Roger Chaffee.”  http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/zorn/chaffee.htm  (Accessed September 14th, 2005).

 

[8]               Ralph Morse, “Put Them High On The List of Men Who Count,” Life Magazine, 6 February 1967, 18.

 

[9]               Ibid., 18.

 

[10]             Ibid., 18.