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on july the 21st 1961 astronaut virgil gus grissom climbed aboard his mercury space
capsule and blasted off the launch pad at cape canaveral florida becoming the second american to
reach outer space grissom proceeded to fly a near textbook mission splashing down in the atlantic
ocean 15 minutes and 37 seconds after liftoff but just when grissom thought he was safe his mission
suddenly took a disastrous turn resulting in him losing his spacecraft and very nearly his life
this is the story of the sinking of liberty bell 7 one of the most controversial incidents
in american manned space flight history on april 12 1961 the space race between the united states
and the soviet union entered a new phase as soviet cosmonaut yuri gagarin became the first
human to orbit the earth on may 15 the americans responded by launching astronaut alan shepard
into the wild blue yonder but while the united states had succeeded in putting a man in space
shepard's 15-minute suborbital flight hardly matched gagarin's feet and the american public
clamored for nasa to move on to orbital missions but the agency refused to be cowed and stuck to
its relatively conservative program of incremental testing astronaut john glenn soon to be the first
american to orbit the earth later defended this slow and steady wins the race approach writing we
were not in this program to perform great space feat but to gather valuable information for the
future if we tried to interrupt or shortcut this process we would not have proven very much in the
long run it was far more important for us to do it right we felt than to do it the first america's
second space mission mercury redstone 4 would thus be a repeat of alan shepard's suborbital flight
and to pilot the mission robert gilruth director of nasa's space task group selected gus grissom
born on april the 3rd 1926 in mitchell indiana during the second world war grissom enlisted
in the u.s army air force as an aviation cadet however the war ended before grissom could see
service and after being discharged he enrolled at purdue university obtaining a bachelor's degree in
mechanical engineering in 1950 he reenlisted in the air force and flew a hundred combat missions
as a fighter pilot during the korean war earning the distinguished flying cross in the air medal
after returning to the united states grissom obtained a degree in aero mechanics from the
u.s air force institute of technology test flying new fighter aircraft at edwards air force base in
california and wright-patterson air force base in ohio in 1959 grissom learned that he was one of
110 test pilots being considered for project mercury the united states first manned space
program after passing initial screening grissom and 39 candidates were sent to lovelace clinic in
albuquerque new mexico to undergo a grueling battery of physical and psychological tests
though competition was fierce christian was ultimately selected for the program
along with fellow astronauts alum b shepherd john h glenn malcolm scott carpenter walter
m wally shearer leroy gordon gordo cooper and donald k d slayton the mercury 7 as they soon
became known were introduced to the public at a press conference in washington dc on april 9 1959
and for more on the badass exploits of the mercury 7 member gordo cooper please check out our video
i'll do it myself the greatest feat of piloting in space on our sister channel highlight history
following the example of alan shepard who dubbed his capsule freedom 7 grissom named
his own spacecraft liberty bell 7 even painting an appropriate white crack down the side of the hull
but while grissom's flight plan would be nearly identical to shepherds his spacecraft featured
a number of upgrades in an effort to reduce the number and size of openings in the capsule's
pressure hull engineers and mcdonnell aircraft had originally provided the astronaut with only two
ways of seeing outside a pair of circular portals and a retractable periscope during his may 15th
mercury redstone 3 flied shepard had complained to poor visibility so for grissom's flight mcdonnell
replaced the portholes with a single trapezoidal window directly in front of the astronaut
the most important change however was the design of the capsule's hatch originally the hatch was
secured by 70 titanium bolts meaning it could only be open from the outside in an emergency the only
way for an astronaut to escape was to fold back a hinged section of the instrument panel collapse a
bulkhead and squeeze out through a narrow antenna compartment in the capsule's neck this was less
than ideal so the mercury astronauts lobbied hard for a hatch they could open themselves
thus on liberty bell 7 the hatch retaining bolts were cross-drilled to weaken them and a
length of mild detonating fuse placed around the sill of the hatch to open that the astronaut
depressed a plunger on the inside of the hatch detonating the fuse shearing the bolts and blowing
the hatch clear other upgrades included a new rate control system for the capsules maneuvering
thrusters and joints on grissom's spacesuit that made it easier for him to turn his wrists
liberty bell 7 arrived at cape canaveral from the mcdonnell factory on march the 7th 1961 and
by early july had been mounted atop the redstone rocket and made ready for launch in the lead up
to the launch grisson gave up his favorite hobbies of water skiing and driving his car
at high speeds to avoid being injured and pulled from the mission he also expressed apprehension as
having had insufficient time to practice on the maneuvering simulator or to rehearse emergency
recovery procedures at sea a concern that was to prove uncomfortably prophetic otherwise however
grissom felt confident that the mission would be a success the launch was originally scheduled for
july the 16th but was scrubbed three times due to bad weather the third time on july the 19th
with grissom already aboard the capsule and with just 10 minutes and 30 seconds to go before launch
but on the morning of july 21st the sky was clear and grissom ate a breakfast of steak and eggs with
his backup pilot john glenn donned his spacesuit and was driven to the launch pad at 8 58 am
grissom squeezed into the cramped mercury capsule and the hatch was sealed shut then after a number
of holds due to minor technical difficulties at 12 20 pm the countdown reached zero the redstone's
engines ignited and grissom and liberty bell 7 rocketed into history while the liftoff was smooth
at first grissom soon experienced increasingly violent vibrations that blurred his vision and
made it difficult to read his instruments but as the air thinned this vibration soon died away and
the rest of the ascent was smooth two minutes and 22 seconds into the flight the sky turned
from blue to black the redstone's engine cut off and the capsule separated from the booster liberty
bell 7 was now sailing freely through the vacuum of space just as he had practiced in the simulator
countless times before grissom began testing the capsule's maneuvering thrusters methodically
rotating the spacecraft in roll pitch and yaw unfortunately the magnificent view out of the
new window distracted grissom from his duties so before he could complete his tests it was
time to prepare for re-entry at an altitude of 190 kilometers grissom turned his capsule around fired
and jettisoned his retro rocket package and laid back as liberty bell 7 plunged back through the
atmosphere the re-entry went flawlessly with the capsule's automatic systems functioning exactly as
designed the only hiccup was a small l-shaped tear grissom spotted in his main parachute but this
thankfully did not grow and 15 minutes and 37 seconds after lifting off liberty bell 7 splashed
down in the atlantic ocean 486 kilometers east of cape canaveral it had been a near textbook mission
and another triumph for the u.s space program the moment liberty bill 7 splashed down the
recovery ship uss randolph launched a marine corps sikorsky h-35 helicopter call sign hunt club 1 to
recover the capsule and grissom as the helicopter approached grissom launched into his rehearsed
recovery procedures he unbuckled his harness disconnected his oxygen electrical leads removed
his helmet and unfurled a special rubberneck dam to prevent his suit from flooding if he fell into
the ocean finally he removed the arming pin from the hatch detonation plunger and began writing
down his instrument panel readings on the capsule walls using grease pencil meanwhile the hunt club
one crewed by pilot lieutenant james l lewis and recovery specialist lieutenant john reinhardt
were going through their own recovery procedures before the helicopter could hook onto the caps
your reinhardt first had to cut away the three meter long radio whip antenna protruding from
the top of the spacecraft this was accomplished using a tool called a cookie cutter essentially
a set of pruning shears mounted on a pole and powered by a set of explosive squibs once the
antenna was trimmed reinhard would use another tool called a shepherd's crook to hook a recovery
line to the capsule the helicopter would then lift the capsule so that the hatch sill rose above
the water line allowing grissom to blow the hatch reinhardt would then use the helicopter's recovery
winch to lower a horse collar down to grissom once grissom was safely aboard the helicopter
would lift the capsule fully out of the water and fly it and grissom to the waiting recovery ship
but as hunt club one attempted to trim the antenna suddenly everything went catastrophically wrong
as grissom later wrote i was lying flat on my back and minding my own business when suddenly the
hatch blew off with a dull thud all i could see was blue sky and seawater fishing in over the sill
i made just two moves both of them instinctive i tossed off my helmet and then grabbed the right
edge of the instrument panel and hoisted myself right through the hatch i've never moved faster
in my life the next thing i knew i was floating high in my suit with the water up to my armpits
but while grissom managed to escape and swim free liberty bell 7 was flooding and sinking
fast aboard hunt club 1 lieutenant reinhard threw aside the cookie cutter and reached out with the
shepherd's crook managing to hook onto the capsule just before it sank beneath the waves lieutenant
lewis then attempted to pull up but the helicopter struggled to lift the heavy waterlogged capsule
meanwhile grissom was running into trouble of his own while he should easily have been able to
float in his spacesuit in his rush to escape the capsule grissom had forgotten to close an oxygen
outlet valve on his thigh causing his suit to slowly fill with water and drag him under
worse still the rotor wash from hunt club one kicked up tall waves that washed over
grissom's head after surviving rocketing past the edge of space and hurtling back to earth
at six times the speed of sound america's second astronaut faced an ignoble death by drowning and
on live television no less while lieutenant reinhard would normally have lowered the horse
collar and lifted the struggling grisham to safety suddenly another emergency rid his head
as lieutenant lewis struggled to lift the heavy capsule out of the water a warning light blinked
on his instrument panel indicating that he was about to burn out an engine bearing lewis had no
choice but to order reinhardt to cut the capsule loose and return to the uss randolph before the
engine failed liberty bell 7 slipped beneath the waves and grissom treading water nearby could only
look on helplessly as hunt club 1 pulled away and abandoned him he said i tried to signal to him by
waving my arms then i tried to swim over to him but by now there were three other choppers all
hovering around trying to get close to me and their rotor blades kicked up so much spray that
it was hard for me to move the second helicopter in line was right in front of me and i could see
a guy taking pictures of me through a window at this point the waves were leaping over my
head i had to swim hard just to keep my head up i thought to myself we've gone through the whole
flight and now you're going to sink right here in front of all these people i suppose the crew
did not realize how much trouble i was in i was panting hard and every time a wave lapped over me
i took a big swallow of water i tried to rouse them by waving my arms but they just seemed to
wave back at me i wasn't scared i was angry then i looked to my right and saw a third helicopter
coming my way and dragging a horse collar behind it across the water as soon as i saw it i thought
i've got it made at long last this helicopter crewed by lieutenant george cox the same pilot
who had recovered alan shepard after his flight managed to winch grissom to safety his harrowing
ordeal was finally over popular retellings of this incident such as the 1983 film the right stuff
often depict grissom panicking upon splashdown implying that either he or his recently removed
helmet accidentally struck and triggered the hatch plunger these depictions also show grissom being
treated as a pariah by nasa and blamed the loss of a spacecraft in reality nothing could be further
from the truth while pilot error was initially suspected this explanation was quickly ruled out
and grissom was cleared of all responsibility indeed it is highly unlikely that grissom
would have panicked like his fellow mercury seven astronauts he had been specifically selected for
his natural coolness under pressure furthermore had grissom actually been blamed for the incident
he would certainly have lost his prime slot in the nasa flight crew rotation a slot which allowed him
to become commander of the first project gemini mission gemini 3 on march 23 1965. in a classic
bit of dark humor grissom named his spacecraft molly brown a cheeky reference to the popular
broadway musical the unsinkable molly brown nasa administrators were not too impressed and after
gemini 3 the agency banned astronauts from naming their spacecraft this prohibition remained in
place until the apollo program when the need to differentiate between the apollo command service
module and lunar module led to the reintroduction of call signs like apollo 11's columbia and eagle
but if grissom didn't trigger liberty bell's having's hatch what did while the capsule was
eventually located and raised from the bottom of the atlantic in july 1999 close examination of
this spacecraft failed to yield any clues as to the cause of the sinking investigators had hoped
that footage from an on-board camera designed to record grissom's reactions to his supply
would reveal what was happening inside the capsule at the moment the hatch blew but sadly immersion
in seawater for 38 years had completely destroyed the exposed film what happens on that papal day
thus remains a matter of speculation what is known is that grissom could not possibly have triggered
the hatch himself due to the particular design of the hatch detonating mechanism the mild detonating
fuse in the hatch was detonated mechanically using a firing pin and a percussion cap activated by the
astronaut depressing the hatch release plunger ordinarily this plunger was secured using a
removable shear pin with the pin removed the plunger took 25 newtons of force to activate
with the pin still in place 40 newtons in both cases this is too much force to be accidentally
triggered by grissom's hand or helmet furthermore triggering the hatch caused the plunger to kick
back violently against the astronaut's hand leaving a tell-tale bruise which grissom's
post-flight medical examination did not reveal indeed at the end of his mercury atlas 8 flight
on october 3rd 1962 fellow mercury astronaut wally shearer deliberately blew his capsule's hatch and
displayed the resulting bruise vindicating grissom once and for all today there are two
main theories as to what caused grissom's hatch to blow the first focuses on the capsule's emergency
release lanyard designed to allow recovery crews to blow the hatch from the outside
in the event the astronaut became incapacitated this lanyard was stored behind a small sheet
metal cover on the capsule's exterior secured by a single screw according to this theory the cover
came loose during re-entry allowing the lanyard to spill out and become tangled in the capsule's
parachute shrouds when the capsule splashed down and the parachute collapsed into the ocean it
pulled on the lanyard and detonated the hatch the other major theory blamed the recovery helicopter
hunt club one whose rotors were known to generate large amounts of static electricity according to a
later account by marine corps lieutenant john reinard the man in charge of cutting liberty
bell's seven's antenna prior to recovery gus said that he was ready and we slid over when i
touched the antenna there was an arc both squibs had gone off without my activating them and they
were on two separate switches at the same time the hatch came off it could be that some static charge
set the hatch off recent examination of enhanced recovery footage reveals that the hatch detonation
did indeed coincide with the moment reinhard touched the capsule with the cookie cutter pole
lending credence to the theory that it was static electricity from the helicopter and not grissom
which set off the hatch indeed the only mistake grissom made was arming the hatch mechanism
before the helicopter had latched on and lifted the capsule a procedure which was changed for
all subsequent mercury missions however in light of grissom's ordeal all but one of the remaining
mercury astronauts chose not to blow their hatches until the capsules were safely on the deck of the
recovery ship but whatever the actual cause the loss of liberty bill 7 cast a long shadow over the
u.s space program one that would ironically contribute to gus grissom's untimely death
grissom's prime slot in the crew rotation meant that he was chosen to command not only the first
gemini flight but also the first apollo mission alongside astronauts ed white and roger chaffee
grissom however was less than impressed with his new command while the gemini capsules like
grissom's molly brown featured fighter jet style ejection seats the new block one apollo spacecraft
dispensed with quick escape mechanisms entirely and featured a hatch that opened inward into the
cabin this was done so the higher pressure inside the cabin would keep the hatch firmly
closed and sealed however it also meant that in an emergency it could take up to 90 seconds to open
the hatch and extract the crew the spacecraft's manufacturer north american aviation had advocated
for an outward opening hatch with explosive bolts like on mercury but nasa had pushed back arguing
that such a hatch could accidentally activate just as it had on grissom's 1961 flight and so it was
that on 1 pm on january 27 1967 grissom white and chaffee climbed aboard their spacecraft at cape
canaveral's launch complex 34 and prepared to perform a plugs out test a dress rehearsal that
would stop just short of actually launching apollo 1 into orbit the astronauts were strapped in
the hatch sealed and the cabin pressurized with 115 kilopascals of pure oxygen the test
did not go well with endless problems with the spacecraft systems especially the radios prompting
grissom to grumble in frustration how are we going to get to the moon if we can't talk between two
or three buildings but one minute later a more alarming call was made over the radio fire we've
got a fire in the cockpit let's get out open her up faulty wiring beneath the astronauts couches
had ignited a small fire which fueled by the pure oxygen environment and the extensive use of nylon
in the cabin and the astronauts spacesuits quickly engulfed the spacecraft the searing
heat and rapid spike in cabin pressure made it impossible for ground crews to open the hatch and
within a minute of the fire starting all three astronauts were dead of carbon monoxide poisoning
the apollo 1 fire sent shockwaves through nasa forcing the agency to suspend manned space flights
more than a year and a half and take a long hard look at its priorities and safety procedures
in the wake of the disaster the apollo spacecraft and spacesuits were extensively redesigned to
minimize potential ignition sources isn't the use of flammable materials the capsule was also
fitted with a new outward opening hatch with a compressed nitrogen-powered release mechanism
that could be opened by the crew in only five seconds the new block 2 spacecraft first flew
on october 11 1968 on the orbital apollo 7 mission and with the notable exception of the 1970 apollo
13 mission and performed near flawlessly over 14 manned missions but as is always the case with
major human endeavor this reliability came at a human cost and the tragic story of gus grissom
epitomizes the motto of astronauts everywhere adastra per aspera a rocky road leads to the stars