by Jay Barbree
Veteran astronaut Gus Grissom suits up for the Apollo launch-pad test that would end his life. (NASA).
“Listen to me, Gus,” Wally told his friend. “It’ll take you a minute and a half, possibly two, to get all those hatches open. If you have a problem, even if your fucking nose itches, get the hell out. Make sure they solve the problem before you get back in. Got it?”
“Got it,” Gus nodded and smiled. “Thanks, buddy.”
“We’re ready to get with the count.” That from the blockhouse speakers told every person connected with the rehearsal to get with it.
The lights flashed, the clocks ticked, and the countdown moved through the “plugs out” test—meaning Apollo and the Saturn would stand alone, would operate on their own internal power, with no help from outside.
The launch team was verifying that everything, except fueling and actual launching, would work in a symphony.
The three astronauts, in their full spacesuits and strapped inside Apollo 1, were following the script. Gus Grissom was in the left seat, Ed White in the center, and Roger Chafee on the right.
No one saw it; no one knew just when it came to life.
Somewhere beneath the seat of commander Gus Grissom, an open wire chafed. Insulation was worn and torn. The wire, alive with electrical power, lay bare in a thick soup of 100 percent oxygen—one of the most dangerous and corrosive gases known. Exposed to an ignition source, it is extremely flammable. It had been used in the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft without trouble.
But this much pure oxygen inside a ship as large as Apollo was another story.
Gus Grissom shifted his body for comfort.
His seat moved the bare wire.
It sparked.
INSTANT FIRE!
Flames filled Apollo 1, feeding on the oxygen-soaked materials surrounding the astronauts.
The launch team froze before its television monitors. Muscles stiffened; voices in the blockhouse ceased in mid-sentence. No one knew what he or she was witnessing. It was something horrifying and unbelievable. Flames rampaging inside Apollo 1—a whirlwind of fire raging and burning everything it touched.
The medical readings showed Ed White’s pulse rate jump off the charts—showed the three astronauts burst into instant movement.
The first call from Apollo 1 smashed into the launch team’s headsets.
“Fire!”
One word from Ed White.
Then, the unmistakable deep voice of Gus Grissom.
“I’ve got a fire in the cockpit!”
Instantly afterward, Roger Chaffee’s voice:
“Fire!”
Then a garbled transmission, and then the final plea:
“Get us out!”
Then words no one would ever understand, followed by a scream and—
Silence.
In the blockhouse, Deke Slayton jumped from his chair, shouting, “What the hell’s happening?”
Eyes stared in horror at the monitors. Flames expanded swiftly, building to a white glare before subsiding, and Deke thought he saw a shadow moving inside. He couldn’t be sure, but then he saw bright orange flames flickering about Apollo 1’s hatch.
Hellish flames followed by thick smoke boiling outward.
An icy chill moved over his skin. Those calls of fire, that final garbled scream—they had come from inside Apollo 1.
Pad crews were rushing to the scene, trying to get to Gus, Ed, and Roger, while astronaut Stuart Roosa on the blockhouse console was trying frantically to talk with them. Again and again he called, desperate, his face chalk white.
No response.
Then, there was a shout from the pad over the radio loop: “Get a doctor out here, quick!”
Deke heard that! You don’t need a doctor for dead men. It was a glimmer, just a small hope. He grabbed two doctors standing nearby, and they headed for the blockhouse door.
Deke lived a lifetime in that mad run to the launch pad. He and Gus had been fishing and hunting buddies for years. They had flown everywhere together, and when it came to astronaut training, Gus had saved his ass during a water-rescue drill. Deke had fallen off his raft, and because he’d never really learned to swim, he almost drowned. But there was Gus, who could swim like a frog, and Gus saved him.
“Hang in there, buddy!” Deke shouted inside his head.
They reached the gantry, rode the elevator to level 8, and rushed into the White Room. The hatch was already open.
The doctors leaned in, studied the scene, and then pulled away slowly.
One turned to Deke. “They’re gone,” he said, shaking his head.
Deke held his position. Just for a moment. Gus was in there. He had to see for himself. He stepped over and leaned inside the hatch. It was all burnt. Everything was black ash. It was a death chamber. Ed White was on the bottom and Gus and Roger were crumpled on top of him. “They were clawing at those goddamn hatches,” Deke cursed. “They were trying to get out,” he shouted. “Damn it, they were trying to get out!” He caught himself. He was about to lose it. Then he saw it. Their suits! Their suits had protected them from the flames. None of them had burns. “It was all that goddamn crap they were breathing,” Deke cursed again. “It killed them, damn it. The fire sucked the oxygen right out of their lungs.”
Deke caught himself again. He paused, took a breath. Slowly he was putting things back together, gathering his thoughts.
Suddenly and strangely, he was thankful. He was realizing how quick death had been. He reached down and touched Gus’s gloved hand. “You didn’t suffer, buddy,” he choked back the words. “Thank God you guys didn’t suffer.” Then, Deke Slayton walked into the darkness and cried.
The tears flowed for five, perhaps ten minutes; Deke wasn’t sure. He could only stand there and hurt, and when the tears were slowing he turned once again to the blackened Apollo. “This won’t happen again, guys,” he promised the fallen astronauts. “It won’t happen again.”
Within hours after the Apollo 1 fire, Gus, Ed, and Roger were being remembered in America’s homes. In the home of Frank Sinatra, the memories were recent and special. Ten days before the astronauts died in the fire, they were flying to the Apollo plant in California hoping to get some training time in an up-to-date simulator. They ran into problems with one of their T–38 jets and had to land at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas. While the jet’s problems were being fixed, they decided to take in a show.
Frank Sinatra was on stage, and no sooner than they sat down, Frank had them brought up front. They were wearing their astronaut flight jackets, and Old Blue Eyes took a shine to Gus’s jacket. He was especially impressed with Grissom’s mission patches.
Gus grinned. He stood up, removed his jacket, and gave it to Frank. Sinatra was so moved he cried before his audience. Ten days later, he cried even more.
When Apollo 1 burned I was on my way to the Bahamas to cover a news conference by New York City congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The NBC news desk immediately rushed me back to the Cape, where I found reporting difficult. I kept wishing I had done more. Just what more, I have never fairly identified.
Gus Grissom was laid to rest at Arlington. Rifle volleys split the air, a bugler sounded mournful taps, and jet fighter pilots roared overhead in a final salute. In uniform, the remaining six Mercury astronauts stood solid, at attention. They had been seven, the Mercury Seven. Tragedy had removed one from their proud number.
Later that day, there was again the salute, the bugler’s stirring taps, and the thunder of jet fighters as Roger Chaffee went to rest at Grissom’s side.
On the same afternoon, on a bluff overlooking his beloved West Point, Ed White went to his final destination.
It was over.
And as Deke promised Gus, Ed, and Roger, it never happened again on his watch.
There was a new beginning.
The Apollo 1 fire sent red flags sailing through the space agency and its contractors with one question: Why? NASA boss James Webb gave the job of answering t
hat question to Floyd L. Thompson, director of the Langley Research Center in Virginia. He ordered Thompson to set up a board of review: “Find out what the hell really happened, Floyd, and get back to me as soon as possible.” Thompson nodded and brought in some of the toughest investigators and specialists on the planet. Among them was Frank Borman, who had commanded the two-week Gemini 7 flight. Together, they assembled a team of fifteen hundred men and women to trace every inch Apollo 1 had traveled in its construction, its movements from hangar to hangar, and its tests on its launch pad.
They looked at thousands of dials and switches and transistors and electrical connections, and then they built an exact copy of Apollo 1 and set it ablaze. The test badly shook many who could not study the results until the next day. Some went home and stared at the walls.
From the outset, heads rolled in the top reaches of executive suites. The search for incompetence didn’t have far to go. It was right in front of the investigators’ eyes.
By summer’s end 1967, NASA’s George Page, a veteran of the Mercury and Gemini flights, could swallow no more. He was sick of all the politicos’ posturing, stabbing fingers into the air, declaring their innocence while demanding something be done. The problems, Page knew, would be solved at the grunt level, with the techs and engineers pulling wire and turning wrenches, if only the suits in Washington would give them the time.
Page was one of NASA’s best managers and he knew who could make the trains run on time. He phoned an old friend. T. J. O’Malley was in Quincy, Massachusetts, working for General Dynamics’ electric boat division.
“T. J., this is George.”
“Hello there, Mister Page,” O’Malley smiled down the line. “How’s everything at the Cape?”
“A mess,” George said flatly. “No, let’s make that a goddamn mess.”
“How many asses have you hanged for that fire?”
“Not enough,” George said. “If we hanged all those we should, we’d run out of rope.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Yep, T. J., it’s that bad.” He paused. “We need you, old friend. We need you.”
“Well, George,” T. J. spoke seriously, “I’m expecting a promotion here. I’m expecting it tomorrow morning in fact. And…”
Page interrupted. “T. J., we’re in a terrible mess. We need you,” he pleaded. “Please think it over tonight and we’ll have Buzz Hello call you tomorrow morning.” Buzz Hello was the vice president for North American Aviation, builders of the Apollo.
T. J. O’Malley turned to his wife, Ann. Few disputed the fact O’Malley had married well above his station in life, and he said, “Mrs. O’Malley, George says they need me at the Cape.”
“Tom,” she said lovingly, “you’ve always made this family a good living. We’re with you. It’s your decision, but,” she winked, “Cocoa Beach is nice.”
Thomas J. O’Malley returned to Cape Canaveral exactly one year to the day he had left and was immediately given the job as director of Apollo Operations by North American Aviation.
He went to work that afternoon and within minutes, he knew two things. One, George Page was right on target. And two, he wasn’t sure Page was his friend. What in the hell had George gotten him into?
There were no simple checks and balances in the Apollo operation. Each department was going down its own road. Each was buying its own stuff. Each was reporting to no one. And experience? Hell, they had none of that.
The team was overloaded with retired military, with colonels and other high-ranking officers doing little more than flying on North American’s travel vouchers to military reunions and such.
The whole thing smelled of military paybacks for aviation and aerospace contracts, and in the coming months while review boards were investigating, while others were pointing fingers and covering their own asses, while engineers in the Downey plant were redesigning and rebuilding Apollo, T. J. O’Malley put on his boots, shined their toes, and began kicking ass and taking names.
On October 11, 1968, a Saturn 1B rocket roared to life on the same launch pad where Apollo 1’s Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee had died. The heavyweight rose toward Earth orbit on 1.3 million pounds of thrust with Apollo 1’s backups, astronauts Wally Schirra, Walt Cunningham, and Don Eisele.
Schirra was the first, and would be the only, astronaut to fly all three capsule-type spacecraft of the era—Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo—and he radioed a Mission Control holding its breath, “Apollo is riding like a dream.”
Saturn 1B took Schirra and crew into an orbit 140 by 183 miles high for a mission of eleven days. Apollo 7’s new rebuilt systems and its millions of new parts performed superbly. For the first time, live television from the spacecraft itself fascinated audiences around the world, and our radio and television coverage was suddenly easier. We could monitor the television pictures and describe to our radio listeners what we were seeing, and for television viewers, even though they were black-and-white, the pictures and words spoke for themselves.
The astronauts’ mission was to fly the new ship farther and longer than it would have to fly to the moon and back. The crew was impressed with the size of Apollo 7. Mercury and Gemini had been cramped, but in Apollo, the astronauts could unhook their safety harness and move about the cabin. If they wanted privacy, they could float into a closet-size area beneath the seats, which on later flights to the moon would serve as sleeping quarters.
The eleven-day mission encountered only minor, easily resolved problems. The biggest proved to be with the crew. All three had nasty colds and were orbiting Earth with stuffy noses and headaches. When the mission neared its end, the astronauts were in something less than the best of moods.
The astronauts’ irritability reached its boiling point on the ninth day, when Mission Control decided to try some unplanned systems checks. Apollo 7’s crew rejected the changes in the flight plan immediately, calling them “Mickey Mouse tasks.” Schirra was quick to point out three colleagues had been lost because of lack of attention to plans, called the engineer who thought up one of the tests an “idiot.” Wally Schirra refused to accept any more changes.
I knew from conversations I had had with Wally over coffee that he was flying his last mission. As Gus’s backup, he was picking up the reins dropped tragically by his friend, and after he had proved Apollo was safe to fly, as soon as the debriefings were over he was getting the hell out of Dodge. He’d had it with the space program, and he had made promises to his wife, Jo. He believed the Apollo contract had gone to political cronies instead of experienced, capable people, and because of that, his friend and two colleagues had died.
So, as far as Wally Schirra was concerned, his crew was going to fly the well-thought-out mission and no ad libs, thank you. As commander, he wasn’t going to put his flight in danger. He owed the Apollo 1 crew good results, and he owed his country. He knew NASA had some solid intelligence the Russians were getting ready to try a flight around the backside of the moon. Now, if Apollo 7 could turn in a grade-A performance, the Apollo 8 crew would feel comfortable about beating the Russians there. In spite of his stuffed-up nose and aching head, Wally smiled. The first lunar Christmas could be just around the corner.
TEN
A Christmas Moon
Apollo 8’s astronauts were filled with wonder as they looked out their windows. A bright sphere eased into their view and they cheered. Their home planet was moving before them. From 200,000 miles in space they were seeing the whole globe, dominant with blue seas and white clouds and brown continents. There was Europe with its bountiful lands and mountains, and below, Africa with its deserts and its jungle greens and at its southern tip, Lake Victoria. Earth was a perfect sphere, a heavenly blue marble.
“Toasting the ship,” Apollo 8 was turning slowly to keep the sun’s heat distributed evenly around its outside surface, and the slow roll slid the astronauts’ home silently out of their view. They turned from the windows. Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. That Frank Borman, James Lov
ell, and Bill Anders were between Earth and the moon seemed impossible. They had gambled their lives by riding the Saturn V onto their now lunar flight path. The mighty machine had flown only twice before. The first flight successfully, the second with some problems. But Borman, Lovell, and Anders’s ride was perfection.
They also had the largest television audience in history, more than a half billion people taking in sights from space they had never before seen. And when Earth came into their view again, commander Frank Borman played tour guide. “What you’re seeing is the Western Hemisphere,” the former airline pilot said as if he were pointing out the Grand Canyon. “In the center, just lower to the center, is South America, all the way down to Cape Horn. I can see Baja California and the southwestern part of the United States.”
Jay Barbree reports Apollo 8’s launch from Cape Canaveral before flying to Houston’s Mission Control to cover the Christmas mission to moon orbit. (Barbree Collection).
Apollo 8 had live television, but it was still television in black-and-white, so astronaut James Lovell joined his commander. “For colors, the waters are all sorts of royal blue. Clouds are bright white. The land areas are generally brownish to light brown in texture.”
Mission Control broke in. “You don’t see anybody waving, do you?”
They laughed, and the transmission ended. It was time for the astronauts to get back to work as they crossed an invisible line between Earth and the moon. The line is called the equigravisphere, meaning equal gravity between two celestial bodies. Until this point Apollo 8 had been “coasting uphill” against Earth’s gravitational pull. Now, less than forty thousand miles from the lunar surface, the moon’s gravitational pull was greater.
That meant for the first time since leaving Earth, Apollo 8 was heading downhill, gaining speed, and tomorrow the astronauts would have the choice of sweeping around the moon and heading back home on their present circumlunar flight path or firing the spacecraft’s main service engine and slipping into an orbit around the lunar surface.
