Gus Grissom’s mishap

The second US manned space flight happened on 21 July 1961. Although Glenn had been the back‑up for Shephard, Gus Grissom was chosen for the second manned space flight. Glenn:

Gus’s flight was set for July 19, the day after my fortieth birthday He would have a view Al didn’t have. Al had ridden the Mercury capsule as originally designed, with a porthole and no window. We had discussed other changes with Max Faget and the engineers at McDonnell. Deke wanted foot pedals to make the capsule’s controls more like a plane’s. I had wanted to replace the gauges with tape‑line instrumentation that would provide information at a glance. Both systems would have added too much weight. But Gus’s Liberty Bell 7, as he had named his capsule, had a window.

One problem nobody had figured out the answer to, however, was the one that had plagued Al.

The night before Gus’s flight, I was staying with him in crew quarters as his backup. There was a little medical lab next door. We went in and set to work trying to design a urine collection device. We got some condoms in the lab, and we clipped the receptacle ends off and cemented some rubber tubing that ran to a plastic bag to be taped to his leg.

It seemed to work well enough, and Gus put it on in the morning before he suited up.

Grissom’s flight was postponed because of bad weather. On 19 July the weather was still unsuitable so there was a 48‑hour postponement. Grissom:

I was disappointed, however, after spending four hours in the couch. And I did not look forward to spending another forty‑eight hours on the Cape. It would take that long to purge the Redstone of all its corrosive fuels, dry it out and start all over again. But I felt sure we would get it off on the next time around. And we did. The build‑up was normal. I got up at 1:10 a.m. and was in the spacecraft at 3:58. I was to lie there for 3 hours 22 minutes before we finally lifted off.

We had a few problems with the countdown. One of the explosive bolts that held the hatch in place was misaligned, and at T‑45 minutes they declared a hold to replace it. This took thirty minutes. Then the count was resumed and proceeded to T‑30 minutes where it was stopped so the technicians could turn off the pad searchlights. It was daylight by this time, anyway, and the lights were causing some interference with the booster telemetry. There was another hold at T‑15 minutes to let some clouds drift out of the way of the tracking cameras. This one lasted forty‑one minutes. I spent some of this time relaxing with deep breathing exercises and tensing my arms and legs to keep from getting too stiff. We finally got to the final act and I heard Deke Slayton count down to 5‑4‑3‑2‑1.

I felt the booster start to vibrate and I could hear the engines start. Seconds later, the elapsed time clock started on the instrument panel. I punched the Time Zero Override to make sure that everything was synchronized, started the stopwatch on the clock and reported over the radio that the clock had started. I could feel a low vibration at about T+50 seconds, but it lasted only about twenty seconds. There was nothing violent about it. It was nice and easy, just as Al had predicted. I looked for a little buffeting as I climbed to 36,000 feet and moved through Mach 1, the speed of sound. Al had experienced some difficulty here; his vehicle shook quite a lot and his vision was slightly blurred by the vibrations. But we had made some good fixes. We had improved the aerodynamic fairings between the capsule and the Redstone, and had put some extra padding around my head. I had no trouble at all, and I could see the instruments very clearly.

I did experience a slight tumbling sensation when the Redstone engine shut off at T+142 seconds and when the escape tower went ten seconds later. There was a definite feeling of disorientation. But I knew what it was, and it did not bother me. I could hear the escape rocket fire and the bolts blow that held the tower to the capsule. And I could see the escape rocket zooming off to my right. I saw the tower climb away, and it still showed up as a long slender object against the black sky when I heard the posigrade rockets that separated the capsule from the Redstone fire off. I could hear them bang and could definitely feel them kick. I never did see the booster, though. Neither had Al.

Now, I was on my own. Shortly after lift‑off I went through a layer of cirrus clouds and broke out into the sun. The sky became blue, then a deeper blue, and then – quite suddenly and abruptly – it turned black. Al had described it as dark blue. It seemed jet black to me. There was a narrow transition band between the blue and the black – a sort of fuzzy grey area. But it was very thin, and the change from blue to black was extremely vivid. The earth itself was bright. I had a little trouble identifying land masses because of an extensive layer of clouds that hung over them. Even so, the view back down through the window was fascinating. I could make out brilliant gradations of colour – the blue of the water, the white of the beaches, and the brown of the land. Later on, when I was weightless and about a hundred miles up – almost at the apogee of the flight – I could look down and see Cape Canaveral, sharp and clear. I could even see the buildings. This was the best reference I had for determining my position. I could pick out the Banana River and see the peninsula which runs farther south. Then I spotted the south coast of Florida. I saw what must have been West Palm Beach. I never did see Cuba. The high cirrus blotted out everything except the area from about Daytona Beach back inland to Orlando and Lakeland, to Lake Okeechobee and down to the tip of Florida. It was quite a panorama.

At one point, through the centre of the window, I saw a faint star. At least I thought it was a star, and I reported that it was. It seemed about as bright as Polaris. John Glenn had bet me a steak dinner that I would see stars in the daytime, and I had bet him I would not. I knew that without atmospheric particles in space to defract the light, we should be able to see stars, at least theoretically. But I did not think I would be able to accommodate my eyes to the darkness fast enough to spot them. As it turned out, John lost his bet. It was Venus that I saw, and Venus is a planet. John had to pay me off, after all.

The flight itself went almost exactly according to plan. I had a really weird sensation when the capsule turned around to assume retro‑fire attitude. I thought at first that I might be tumbling out of control. But I did not feel in the least bit nauseous. When I checked the instruments, I could see that everything was normal and that the manoeuvre was taking place just as I had experienced it on the trainer.

Just as this turnaround began, a brilliant shaft of light came flashing through the window. This was the sun. I knew it was coming, but when it started moving across my torso, from my lower left, I was afraid for a moment that it might shine directly into my eyes and blind me. Everything else in the cockpit was completely black except for this narrow shaft of light. But it moved on across my body and disappeared as the capsule finished its turnaround.

I did have some trouble with the attitude controls. They seemed sticky and sluggish to me, and the capsule did not always respond as well as I thought it should. This meant that it took longer for me to work the controls than I had planned, and when my time for testing them was up I was slightly behind schedule. I wanted to fire the retros manually and at the same time use the manual controls to stay in the proper attitude. This was not critical on my flight since I was on a ballistic path and we were just exercising the retrorockets for practice. But it did indicate that we still had a few improvements to make with the controls. Actually, even if I had been in orbit, I could have handled the situation. It was not serious. It just wasn’t perfect. This was the main reason I was up there, of course – to find the bugs in the system before we went all the way.

I was looking out of the window when I fired the retros manually, right on schedule. I could see by checking the view that a definite yaw to the right was starting up. I had planned to use the view and the horizon as a reference to hold the capsule in its proper attitude when they fired. But when I saw this yawing motion start up, I quickly switched back to instruments. You have to stay right on top of your controls when the retros fire, because they can give you a good kick in the pants and you cannot predict in which direction they may start shoving you. Here was where some extra training on the ALFA would have come in handy. It would have given me more confidence in the window as a visual reference for the controls, and I would not have felt it so necessary to go right back to the instruments that I knew best.

It was a strange sensation when the retros fired. Just before they went, I had the distinct feeling that I was moving backwards – which I was. But when they went off and slowed me down, I definitely felt that I was going the other way. It was an illusion, of course. I had only changed speed, not direction.

Despite my problems with the controls, I was able to hold the spacecraft steady during the twenty‑two seconds that it took for the three retros to finish their job.

The re‑entry itself, which I knew could be a tricky period, was uneventful. But it did produce some interesting sensations. Once I saw what looked like smoke or a contrail bouncing off the heatshield as it buffeted its way through the atmosphere. I am sure that what I saw were shock waves. We were really bouncing along at this point. I was pulling quite a few Gs – they built up to 11.2. But they were no sweat. I had taken as many as 16on the centrifuge, and this seemed easy by comparison. I could also hear a curious roar inside the capsule during this period. This was probably the noise of the blunt nose pushing its way through the atmosphere.

Both the drogue chute and the main chute broke out right on schedule. There was a slight bouncing around when the big one dug into the air, but this was no problem. The capsule started to rotate and swing slowly under the chute as it descended. I could feel a slight jar as the landing bag dropped down to take up some of the landing shock.

I hit the water with a good bump at T+15 minutes 37 seconds.

I felt that I was in very good shape. I had opened up the faceplate on my helmet, disconnected the oxygen hose from the helmet, unfastened the helmet from the suit, released the chest strap, the lap belt, the shoulder harness, knee straps and medical sensors. And I rolled up the neck dam of my suit, a sort of turtle‑neck diaphragm made out of rubber to keep the air inside our suit and the water out in case we get dunked during the recovery. This was the best thing I did all day.

This procedure left me connected to the capsule at only two points: the oxygen inlet hose which I still needed for cooling, and the communications wires which led into the helmet. Now I turned my attention to the hatch. I released the restraining wires at both ends and tossed them to my feet. Then I removed the cap from the detonator which would blow the hatch, and pulled out the safety pin. The detonator was now armed. But I did not touch it. I would wait to do that until the last minute, when the helicopter pilot told me he was hooked on and ready for me to come out.

I was in radio contact with “Hunt Club”, the code name for the helicopters which were on their way to pick me up. The pilots seemed ready to go to work, but I asked them to stand by for three or four minutes while I made a check of all the switch positions on the instrument panel. I had been asked to do this, for we had discovered on Al’s flight that some of the readings got jiggled loose while the capsule was being carried back to the carrier. I wanted to plot them accurately before we moved the capsule another foot. As soon as I had finished looking things over, I told Hunt Club that I was ready. According to the plan, the pilot was to inform me as soon as he had lifted me up a bit so that the capsule would not ship water when the hatch blew. Then I would remove my helmet, blow the hatch, and get out.

I had unhooked the oxygen inlet hose by now and 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 sea water rushing in over the sill. I made just two moves, both of them instinctive. I tossed off my helmet, grabbed the right edge of the instrument panel and hoisted myself right through the hatch. I have 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.

Things got a little messy for the few minutes that I was in the water. First I got entangled in the line which attaches the dye marker package to the capsule. I was afraid for a second that I would be dragged down by the line if the capsule sank. But I freed myself and figured I was still safe. I looked up then and for the first time I saw the helicopter that was moving in over the capsule. The spacecraft seemed to be sinking fast, and the pilot had all three wheels down in the water near the neck of it while the co‑pilot stood in the door trying desperately to hook on. I swam over a few feet to try and help, but before I could do anything he snagged it. The top of the capsule went clear under water then. But the chopper pulled up and away and the capsule started rising gracefully out of the water.

I expected the same helicopter crew to drop a horse collar near me now and scoop me up. That was our plan. Instead, they pulled away and left me there. I found out later that the pilot had a red warning light on his instrument panel, telling him that he was about to burn out an engine trying to bolt on to the capsule. Normally, he could have made it. But the capsule full of sea water was too heavy for him, and he had to cut it loose and let it sink. 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 to move.

The second helicopter in line was right in front of me, and I could see two guys standing in the door with what looked like chest packs strapped around them. A third guy was taking pictures of me through a window. At this point the waves were leaping over my head, and I noticed for the first time that I was floating lower and lower in the water. I had to swim hard just to keep my head up. It dawned on me that in the rush to get out before I sank I had not closed the air inlet port in the belly of my suit, where the oxygen tube fits inside the capsule. Although this hole was probably not letting much water in, it was letting air seep out, and I needed that air to help me stay afloat. I thought to myself, “Well, you’ve gone through the whole flight, and now you’re going to sink right here in front of all these people.”

I wondered why the men in the chopper did not try coming in for me. 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 now. 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. In the doorway I spotted Lieutenant George Cox, the Marine pilot who had handled the recovery hook which picked up both Al Shepard and the chimp, Ham. As soon as I saw Cox, I thought, “I’ve got it made.”

The wash from the other helicopters made it tough for Cox to move in close. I was scared again for a moment, but then, somehow, in all that confusion, Cox came in and I got hold of the sling. I hung on while they winched me up, and finally crawled into the chopper. Cox told me later that they dragged me fifteen feet along the water before I started going up. I was so exhausted I cannot remember that part of it. As soon as I got into the chopper I grabbed a Mae West and started to put it on. I wanted to make certain that if anything happened to this helícopter on the way to the carrier I would not have to go through another dunking!

When I had been aboard the carrier for some time an officer came up and presented me with my helmet. I had left it behind in the sinking capsule, but somehow it had bobbed loose and a destroyer crew had picked it up as it floated in the water.

“For your information,” the officer said, “we found it floating right next to a ten‑foot shark.”

This was interesting, but it was small consolation to me. We had worked so hard and had overcome so much to get Liberty Bell launched that it just seemed tragic that another glitch had robbed us of the capsule and its instruments at the very last minute. It was especially hard for me, as a professional pilot. In all my years of flying this was the first time that my aircraft and I had not come back together. Liberty Bell was the first thing I had ever lost.

We tried for weeks afterwards to find out what had happened and how it had happened. I even crawled into capsules and tried to duplicate all of my movements, to see if I could make the same thing happen again. But it was impossible. The plunger that detonates the bolts is so far out of the way that I would have had to reach for it on purpose to hit it, and this I did not do. Even when I thrashed about with my elbows, I could not manage to bump against it accidentally. It remains a mystery how that hatch blew. And I am afraid it always will. It was just one of those things.

Fortunately, the telemetry system worked well during the flight, and we got back enough data while I was in the air to answer the questions that I had gone out to ask. We missed the capsule, of course. It had film and tapes aboard which we would have liked to study. But despite all our headaches along the way, and an unhappy ending, Liberty Bell had performed her mission. She had flown me 302.8 miles downrange, had taken me to an altitude of 118.2 miles at a speed of 5,168 mph, had put me through five minutes of weightless flight, and had brought me home, safe and sound. That was all that really mattered. The system itself was valid. The problems which had plagued us could be fixed, and with our second and final sub‑orbital mission under our belts, we were ready now for the big one – three orbits of the world.