Full Transcript for #57: The Apollo 1 Investigation (The Apollo Program, Part II)

Pat White took her own life. Her children, Ed III and Betty Lynn wrote, “It’s fair to say mom never got over his loss.” For Frank Borman, Pat “was the last [victim] of Pad 34.” Martha Chaffee was cleaning up after dinner when her doorbell rang. It was Sue Bean, the wife of astronaut Al Bean. “I thought you might like some company,” Sue said. Shortly thereafter, Clare Schweickart – wife of astronaut Rusty Schweickart – came over. They told Martha that there had been an accident, but they didn’t know the details. Martha was sure it couldn’t have involved Roger, because he wasn’t flying that day, but when she called his hotel room in Florida and got no answer, she began to worry. Then Mike Collins pulled up and she knew. Before he could say anything, she told Collins, “Mike, I think I know, but I have to hear it.” He delivered the bad news. When Walt and Lo Ella Cunningham got to her house, Martha “was still glassy-eyed and had obviously not yet come to believe that Roger had really died.” After these three women received the devastating news, they had to tell their children that their fathers wouldn’t be coming home. President Lyndon Johnson received a memorandum from senior NASA official Jim Jones dated January 27, 1967 7:45 pm, just over an hour after the fire. It reads, “Mr. President, James Webb just reported that the first Apollo crew was under test at Cape Kennedy and a fire broke out in their capsule and all three were killed. He does not know whether it was the primary or backup crew, but believes it was the primary crew of Grissom, White, and Chaffee.” Responding to this information, Johnson sent personal letters to the families of the three fallen astronauts and issued an official statement from the White House on the evening of the fire. “Three valiant young men have given their lives in the nation’s service. We mourn their great loss and our hearts go out to their families.” Ironically, just a few hours earlier, Johnson had signed the UN Treaty on Outer Space – which said in part, that all nations were free to explore space, that any exploration would be for the benefit of all, with no claims of sovereignty, and that the moon and all other celestial bodies would be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. Great Britain, the USSR, and 57 other countries also signed. NASA Administrator Jim Webb vowed to continue the program, saying, “We in NASA know that their greatest desire that this nation press forward with manned space flight exploration, despite the outcome of any one flight. With renewed dedication and purpose, we intend to do just that…” The press, of course, was all over the story. CBS icon Walter Cronkite editorialized, “This is a time for great sadness – national sadness and certainly personal sadness of the people in the space program. But it’s also a time for courage. And if that sounds trite, I’ll change the word to guts… These guys who went into to it knew it was a test program… [that] was bound to claim its victims… It should not be a case for turning our back or having any question of faltering in our progress forward toward landing on the moon… It shouldn’t in any way damage our national resolve to press on with the program for which these men gave their lives.” But much of the press coverage was very negative with many newspapers and magazines accusing NASA of operating on an unnecessarily accelerated timeline, saying it was “technically senseless” and “highly dangerous” to try to put a man on the moon in the next three years. The New York Times asked, “How could those in charge of the test have ‘failed to identify it as being hazardous?’ The three astronauts had been put into what even a high school chemistry student would know was a potential oxygen incendiary bomb, one needing only a good spark to initiate catastrophe.” The Washington Sunday Star “criticized the accelerated costs of the program and was one of the first to condemn the choice of North American Aviation as the prime contractor to build the spacecraft, opining that ‘know-who’ seemed to win out over know-how.’” “The Soviets issued statements of sympathy and paid tribute [to the fallen astronauts], yet they also expressed their opinion that the accident was a result of ‘haste’ on the part of America and ‘flaws’ in the design of the Apollo spacecraft. The Nation magazine rebuked NASA for its ‘gotta-beat-the-Russians’ philosophy and agreed with the Soviets on the cause of the disaster.” The astronauts and test pilots inside the program knew better though. Frank Borman wrote, “To the NASA of those epochal years, ‘success’ and ‘safety’ were interchangeable words… Yet NASA also recognized two other interchangeable words, ‘mission’ and ‘risk’. To maximize safety merely meant reducing risk, without forgetting that some risk – even terrible risk – was unavoidable.” Walt Cunningham wrote that the fire “reminded the American public that men could and would die exploring the heavens.” As Aviation Weekly likewise pointed out, tragedy “’is an inevitable element of all man’s efforts to extend his horizons,” and the “exploration of space was no different.’ Apollo 1, the editors rightly predicted, ‘was the first tragedy in the nine-year history of manned space flight, but it would not be the last.” Remember, the Soviets didn’t official acknowledge the 1960 Nedelin disaster until 1989. For their part, the American people, likely lulled into a false sense of security thanks to the perfect record of Projects Mercury and Gemini, were wavering in their support for the Apollo Program. A Harris poll take three months after the fire showed that 42% of Americans wanted to cut the space program’s funding while only 13% wanted to increase it. Only 38% thought it should stay the same. Three months after that, another poll showed that 54% of Americans did not think the enormous cost of the moon shot – in both lives and money – was worth it. As Jim Lovell wrote in Lost Moon, the American people were beginning to get a sense

of the mortal price tag traveling in space could carry – and they didn’t care for it. “America might be willing to continue funding NASA’s increasingly risky cosmic expeditions but give them too many flag-covered coffins or too many crepe-draped windows, and they just might drop the hammer on the whole operation.”  The funerals for the three men were scheduled for January 31 – just four days after the accident – which gave the families little time to prepare. Wally Schirra was the executor of Gus Grissom’s will and worked with Betty on the plans. Betty handled the planning in the same straightforward, composed manner she had handled the news of Gus’s death. “What do you want?” Wally asked her. “The whole nine yards,” she replied. “The whole thing. Whatever they do, do it.” The funerals for Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee would be nearly identical and only a few hours apart at Arlington National Cemetery.  Pat White was having a harder time deciding the proper way to honor her fallen husband and found herself fighting with NASA in the process. Apparently, Washington politicians had already decided that all three men would be buried at Arlington, but Pat knew that her husband’s wishes were to be buried at West Point, where both he and his father had graduated. Frank Borman was helping Pat with her plans and was incensed with how the government was treating this new widow. Through her tears, Pat told him she had been informed that there would only be one ceremony. Borman later wrote: “I couldn’t believe it. They were worrying about what would make it easier on them than on the victims’ families. It was a typical bureaucratic reaction and I was angry. “That’s nonsense,” Borman told Pat. “We’re going to do exactly what you want and I’ll take care of it.” And he did. He called everyone that needed to be called and in an unyielding manner informed them <QUOTE> “Ed White’s funeral will be at West Point like the family wants, so you might as well go ahead and arrange things – it’s the way it’s going to be.” And it was. In his book, Apollo 1: The Tragedy that Put Us on the Moon, Ryan Walters gives the following description of the astronauts’ funerals: “Gus and Roger were buried with full military honors during separate services at Arlington National Cemetery, attended by President Johnson. Gus’s pallbearers were the six remaining [Mercury 7] astronauts… For Roger, it [was] members of the third group of astronauts… Johnson spoke to family members, offering personal condolences. But his efforts were not met with kind acknowledgement but brief glances and slightly nodding heads, as most family members quickly looked away from the man who had done so much to create the space program and point it toward the moon. It wasn’t a snub, as some in the media portrayed it, but the fact that the families were ‘still in a state of shock,’ said Gus’s brother Lowell. “The first lady and Vice President [Hubert] Humphry traveled to West Point, New York, to be at Ed’s memorial

service, which, sadder still, fell on what would have been Ed and Pat’s fourteenth wedding anniversary. Pallbearers were Ed’s closet friends, [all members of NASA’s second astronaut class]. [One of those pallbearers, Buzz Aldrin wrote] ‘I can’t think of a better symbol of courage for future generations of cadets[;]’ [speaking of West Point’s student body.] Lady Bird Johnson wrote about the day in her diary. ‘There was an element of strength and beauty in this cruel day. Mrs. White wept softy as they presented her the folded flag from Ed White’s coffin.’ The first lady then leaned down to speak to Pat and the children and received a better reception than her husband. Pat then asked the first land to pass a message to President Johnson. ‘Please tell the president that Ed loved him. Now will you remember to tell him that?’ For the first lady of the United States, the kind sentiment on such a solemn day ‘was almost too much.’ “Soon after the funerals, the three widows met with [Mercury 7 astronaut Deke] Slayton. After an astronaut’s first flight, he [or she] is presented with gold astronaut wings. Slayton had never flown in space since he was grounded after his heart issue during [Project] Mercury… so he did not have a set of astronaut wings. But Gus, Ed, and Roger had had a set made… for [their friend] that included a diamond. They had intended to give it to him after Apollo 1’s successful flight. So the three ladies asked to see Slayton and give him his wings. ‘I was still badly shaken. Ratteld and battered is a good way to say how I felt. Betty, Pat, and Martha were holding up better than I was,’ [Deke] later said. ‘They broke the tension by making me a surprise presentation. Since what those guys planned could never happen now, the wives, for whatever reason, choose this, the saddest and grimmest occasion in their lives, to present that pin to me. I was absolutely overwhelmed. Flattened. It was a gesture I will never forget.’ He wore them with pride every day, with the exception of a handful of days some two and a half years later, when Neil Armstrong carried them to the moon and back.” After the funerals, many astronauts were not surprisingly anxious about the future of the Apollo program. Combined with the growing discontent over the cost of the program, a disaster like the one that just happened could have been the beginning of the end. Apollo 1 was a watershed moment for NASA – it has been said that the history of the Apollo Program is divided into two parts: before the fire and after the fire. Within hours of the catastrophe, NASA Administrator Jim Webb called for an investigation into the fire and told his deputy administrator Robert Seamans to establish a review board. Seamans, named Floyd Thompson, NASA’s Langley Research Center director as chair and appointed eight others to the board, including Frank Borman. In the eyes of the other astronauts, Borman was the perfect choice as their representative on the investigative committee. Of course, they were the ones who risked the most if a hap-hazard investigation was attempted and the issues were simply swept under the rug kind of like we always assume will happen with agency-led investigations – and by “we” I mean me and those as cynical and/or as jaded and I am when it comes to governmental self-accountability. Many astronauts echoed the words of Gene Cernan when he said “Competence was never a question with Frank, because he operated on a higher level than most of us.” If Borman said the problems had been identified and fix, all the Apollo astronauts would feel confident they were flying in the safest spaceships possible. While the board consisted of nine individuals, about 1,500 people were directly involved with the investigation – 600 from various government agencies and 900 from private companies and universities. Though Borman was the only astronaut officially on the board, nearly all the astronauts played key roles in the investigation. I usual, I am not going to get into all of the nitty-gritty engineering details of the investigation, but every inch of the charred spacecraft was gone over in minute detail multiple times before it was completely disassembled and gone over again. I will mention some of the human elements of the investigation though. Borman was the first allowed inside the capsule after precautions were taken to not destroy any evidence. He said, “I can’t even begin to describe that chamber of horror. To me, the interior of a spacecraft had always provided a reassuring sight of gleaming instruments and spotless equipment, creating the illusion of total indestructibility. [The module] was a fire-blackened charnel house, a charred shell that wasn’t even a recognizable facsimile of a spacecraft. Hour after hour I’d sit in the charred cabin… I went in first to catalogue and inspect the switches, trying to unearth some unknown flaw in the electrical system. Over and over again I examined the hatch, and finally concluded that if Ed White couldn’t open it, nobody could have; its design had frustrated even the strongest of the astronauts.”   Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham, two of the astronauts tasked with reviewing the cockpit recording each had their own take on the tough assignment. Eisele rhetorically asked in his memoir, “Did you ever listen to your friends scream in panic, then agony, as they fry to death?” Cunningham said that hearing the audio “left a sick feeling at the pit of my stomach… because of the horrifying way they had to die. “ Later, Eisele had the chance to climb into the burned-out capsule, trying to determine the cause of the fire. “Like Borman, he was horrified by what he saw. There were ‘bits and pieces of charred and melted material. The acrid smell of burned plastic, paint, and nylon were overpowering. There were little piles of debris all over the floor and the crew couches. The side walls and instrument panels were charred, discolored, and warped from the heat. The mess in the cabin

and the screaming on the tapes gave me nightmares at first. But after a while the dreams went away, along with the knot in my stomach.’” The capsule originally built for the Apollo 2 mission was shipped from California to Florida to be taken apart side-by-side with the Apollo 1 capsule for comparison. Borman was the board member tasked with overseeing this enormously critical project. A third Apollo craft, already in Florida for an unmanned test of the Saturn V rocket was also meticulously inspected and in the words of Deke Slayton, “turned up nothing but problems.” The third module had a slew of sloppy wiring, some of which were completely skinned. In the end, this craft had a total of 1400 discrepancies. Slayton noted that he was “surprised at some of the sloppy workmanship.” It seemed like every capsule coming out of the North America Aviation plant was in poor shape. Maybe he wouldn’t have been surprised if Gus Grissom’s pre-fire concerns had been seriously acknowledged and addressed.  Unsurprisingly, NASA was criticized for launching its own investigation, even though Jim Webb had gotten President Johnson’s approval before doing so, with many media outlets pointing out this was just another case of the government investigating itself. Keeping the investigation in house did have at least two benefits. 1. It didn’t become the media circus that the investigation into the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster would become, and 2. There was little political pressure to produce findings aligned with either a positive or negative outlook on NASA, based on individual politicians’ feelings toward the space program.  After investigating the fire from every possible angle, in the end, the board identified “six conditions that directly lead to the tragedy: ‘a sealed cabin, pressurized with an oxygen atmosphere. An extensive distribution of combustible materials in the cabin. Vulnerable wiring carrying spacecraft power. Vulnerable plumbing carrying a combustible and corrosive coolant. Inadequate provisions for the crew to escape. [And] [i]nadequate provisions for rescue and medical assistance.’ One thing the investigation was unable to determine was the definite cause of the fire. It was most likely a spark from a frayed wire but the absolute destruction of the capsule made identifying the source beyond a reasonable doubt impossible. But whatever the ultimate cause of the spark, the pure oxygen environment and shoddy workmanship with a lot of flammable materials spread the fire and the poorly designed escape hatch turned the cabin into a deathtrap. During construction, the astronauts had suggested a simpler hatch design that easily opened outward instead of the complex two part hatch that opened inward but were told by NASA engineer and manager Joseph Shea that redesigning the hatch would cost to much money and take too much time. Well, dear listener, I did it again. I made an assumption about the time I would need to tell a part of a story and miscalculated. I thought we would wrap up the Apollo 1 story today and move on to other parts of the Apollo program, but it didn’t happen. Now, risking another such assumption, I will say that I believe that next week we will see the aftermath of the Apollo 1 investigation and how the investigation’s outcome likely saved the Apollo Program. If you need more Ghosts of Arlington content in your life, there are pictures related to every episode on the website www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com. You can help others learn about the podcast by leaving a 5-star rating and review at Apple Podcast or wherever you listen. If you really want to make my day, refer the show to a friend. And remember, fear not death, for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.