Category Freedom 7

Alex McCool began working on the Redstone engine program at Huntsville in 1954, and six years later he joined NASA in order to continue working with Dr. von Braun on the development of larger launch vehicles, including the mighty Saturn rockets. In later years he became manager of the Space Shuttle Projects Office at Marshall, and in a 2003 interview for the Huntsville Times to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first Redstone rocket, McCool was asked to reflect on the early days of the rocket known as “Old Reliable.”

“Really, that rocket, and the propulsion work that went into it, was the beginning of space for us here,” said McCool. “There wouldn’t have been a space program, or a Space Shuttle or a trip to the Moon without the Redstone. It’s the foundation of what we do today. It was the beginning of the space program for America.

“The Germans had been working on other advanced rockets after they developed the V-2, and the Redstone used a lot of that work. They brought a lot of that material with them. They had been working successfully on rockets throughout the war.

“Early on, von Braun had thought about going into space,” McCool reflected. “He talked about it in public all the time, and the Germans had been working on rocket designs for it. He had worked out plans to modify the Redstone to carry a man early on, in the mid-1950s, while still working for the Army. They’d talked about putting somebody up in space even then.” [14]

On 2 April 1958, in response to Soviet space efforts that were proving demoralizing to the American public, President Eisenhower had sent a bill to Congress calling for the immediate establishment of a civilian aeronautics and space agency. Congress passed the Space Act on 29 July, resulting in the creation of NASA, which officially came into existence on 1 October.

A Space Task Group was formed at the Air Force’s Langley Research Center, Virginia, on 5 November, with Robert Gilruth appointed as director. On behalf of NASA, this task group was given four major objectives: to prepare specifications for a manned spacecraft; to plan and build a world-wide tracking network; to select and develop a suitable launch vehicle; and to select and train potential space pilots who would undergo a two-year training program.

With no precedents or government procedures to follow, NASA had to decide where the best candidates could be found, how many were required, and how they should be tested. What they did know was that the astronaut selection process would hinge on three crucial factors: physical, psychological, and technical.

In the final week of 1958, after several meetings between NASA Administrator Keith Glennan and his deputy Hugh Dryden, Robert Gilruth, and other upper-level representatives of NASA and the Space Task Group, a consensus was reached. For speed and facility in arriving at the selections, it was decided to restrict the search to the ranks of military test pilots. There were several reasons for this: test pilots were familiar with the rigors of service life, they were available at short notice, and their full service and medical records were on file for scrutiny.

It was decided to carry out the medical testing at an independent medical facility in New Mexico called the Lovelace Clinic, and to conduct further stress testing and psychological evaluations at the Wright Air Development Center in Ohio, which had already been involved in evaluation testing of space candidates for other poten­tial service programs.

The Space Task Group determined that any candidate had to possess a university degree; be a graduate of a test pilot school; have around 1,500 jet hours; be in superb condition, both mentally and physically; be no taller than 5 feet 11 inches – a height dictated by the confines of the Mercury spacecraft – and be less than 40 years of age at the time of selection.

The first task for those involved in the initial selection phase, or Phase One of the operation, was a trip to the Pentagon where they pulled and evaluated the records of 508 pilots against broad selection criteria, checked their medical records and reports by superior officers, verified that they had the minimum amount of jet flying hours, and assessed the type of flying involved. Out of 225 Air Force records screened, only 58 met the minimum requirements. Of 225 Navy records screened, only 47 made the grade. Of 23 Marine Corps records screened, only five met the minimum standards. Thirty-five Army records were screened, but none met the requirement of being a graduate from a test pilot school. Women were excluded from consideration as there were no female military test pilots. Hence out of the 508 records screened, 110 met the minimum standards.

Each of the 110 candidates was then ranked in terms of his overall qualifications and the reviews were then placed in ranking order, from the most promising to least promising. These men were to be brought to Washington under secret orders and in civilian clothing in order to be briefed at the Pentagon by a senior officer from their respective service, as well as NASA officials. The first two groups would each have 35 men, with the remaining 40 men forming the third group. The groups were to be briefed in successive weeks during Phase Two of the operation.

The first group of 35 candidates turned up at the Pentagon on Monday, 2 February 1959, where the Air Force candidates were initially briefed on Project Mercury and what it might mean for their service careers by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Thomas White, while the Navy and Marine candidates were simultaneously briefed in another room by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke. Prior to this, the men knew very little of Project Mercury or what it entailed. After the service briefings, the men were gathered together in one room for a more spe­cific NASA briefing and an outline of Project Mercury by Charles Donlan, the asso­ciate director of the STG, Warren North, a NASA test pilot and engineer, and Lt. Robert Voas, a Navy psychologist. The men were then told that if they wished to opt out of consideration at that stage it would not be held against them or noted in their service records.

Those candidates that were willing to continue to the next phase were subjected to a preliminary suitability interview by psychologists Dr. George Ruff and Dr. Edwin Levy, then they sat through a review of their medical history. Some men proved to be taller than the limit, and were eliminated from the process. After the second round of briefings the following week, a total of 69 men had been pro­cessed. Faced with a higher than expected volunteer rate, Donlan canceled the third group, since he had more than enough applicants to fill the intended twelve positions. Eventually, six of the 69 candidates were found to be too tall and 16 declined to continue, leaving 47. Further checks and testing by NASA eliminated another 15 candidates, bringing the number down to 32.

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Mercury astronaut candidate Scott Carpenter undergoes reaction testing at the Wright Aeromedical Laboratory. (Photo: USAF)

All 32 men endured a meticulous, demeaning, and in some ways brutal week-long medical examination at the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico. This was followed by another torturous week at the Wright Aeromedical Laboratory in Ohio, where they were subjected to extreme fitness and physiological testing, the purpose of which was to sort out the supermen from the near-supermen. Or to quote author Tom Wolfe on the subject, the selectors were seeking a group of men with “The Right Stuff.”[1] In the process, one (James Lovell) was excluded for health reasons.

Then the results were compiled and considered, and the remaining 31 candidates were slotted into the following four categories:

Outstanding without reservations: 7

Outstanding with reservations: 3

Highly recommended: 13

Not recommended: 8 [16]

Early in March 1959 the results were forwarded to a panel at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D. C., for the final decisions to be made. It had been decided to halve the number required from twelve to six, but it proved impossible to decide between the final pair and so they were both accepted. Those chosen were notified on 2 April. A week later, on 9 April, seven test pilots were introduced to the waiting news media as the nation’s first astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil (‘Gus’) Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Donald (‘Deke’) Slayton. They were about to be trained for a task beyond all others for a pilot – a flight into space with Project Mercury.

Giving his reason for wanting to become an astronaut, Shepard said, “I thought it was definitely a chance to serve my country. And I guess everyone feels an urge to do something no one else has ever done – the urge to pioneer and accept a challenge and try to meet it. I realized what it would mean to the Nation in prestige and morale. And I felt that I’d like to contribute whatever ability and maturity I had achieved. It would also, of course, be a big boost to my own self-confidence to know that I had done well in my chosen field. Every man needs that.” [17]

It was April 1961 and 20-year-old Air Controlman 3/c (Third Class) Ed Killian from Texas had been serving aboard the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39) for eighteen months. During that time “The Champ” – as she was fondly known to her crewmembers – had mostly been engaged in an anti-submarine patrol rotation out of NAS Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Towards the end of the month the ship finished a three-week sweep northeast of Norfolk, Virginia, and her exhausted crew were eagerly anticipating some shore leave.

Killian, days away from his 21st birthday, was looking forward to celebrating this milestone in his life in New York City. But then Capt. Ralph Weymouth, the ship’s commanding officer, made an announcement over the ship’s loudspeakers that left Killian’s liberty plans in tatters. Unbeknownst to the crew at the time, however, this change in their schedule would give every man on board the chance to participate in, and be an eyewitness to, an historic event. The ship was to set a new course for the Mayport Naval Station near Jacksonville, Florida. Once there, and after a couple of days, they were to join other units in an area to the east of nearby Cape Canaveral for what was vaguely described as some “special ops.”

“This news of extending the cruise didn’t sit well with the crew in general, and there was a lot of grousing about it,” Killian reflected. “The scuttlebutt was that we were going to do another anti-submarine demonstration for some bigwigs, like the one we had done the previous summer for the Latin American generalissimos and admi­rals in the Caribbean. Later, while we finished polishing the brass fittings on Pri-Fly’s windows [the control tower for flight operations, known as Primary Flight Control], Cdr. Howard Skidmore, the ship’s Air Officer, known aboard as the ‘Air Boss,’ came in with a big excited grin on his face and told us that the ship was to be the recovery vessel for a space shot from Cape Canaveral. We had heard about the chimpanzee Ham’s flight and recovery in January, and being a recovery vessel for another ‘monkey flight’ held no excitement for us. Such an event was viewed as a poor trade-off for missing liberty in Quonset Point.” [1]

CIVILIANS ON BOARD

The crew’s puzzlement grew in Mayport the day after their arrival, with dozens of civilians boarding the carrier. Killian recalls “about fifty NASA and government offi­cials, photographers by the dozen, and boxes of equipment by the hundreds.” Frustration grew amongst the crewmembers, already annoyed at not returning to Quonset Point, who now found their normal routines delayed by these civilians, while the mess hall, already small, was becoming jammed with extra bodies at meal times. Often the line for food wrapped around several frames of the third deck space, creat­ing much grumbling and dissention.

Eventually, Cdr. Skidmore gave his small group of six air controllers in Pri-Fly additional details about the special operation for which the USS Lake Champlain had been selected. As the ship and her crew had performed well in fleet-wide operational competitions, she had been selected as the prime spacecraft recovery vessel for the United States’ first manned space shot, then scheduled for 2 May.

The recovery task force was actually comprised of several task groups, each under an individual commander, dispersed along the projected track of the spacecraft. The task

group in the predicted landing area was commanded by R/Adm George P. Koch, Commander, Carrier Division 18, flying his flag aboard the USS Lake Champlain. A crucial element of the recovery task force was a flotilla of destroyers commanded by R/Adm Frederick V. H. Hilles. In cooperation with fellow flag officer Koch aboard the USS Lake Champlain, Hilles would exercise his command of the destroyers from the

Recovery Control Room located at NASA’s Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral. The units of this group were:

Two of the six destroyers were positioned 100 miles or more from the USS Lake Champlain, between Cape Canaveral and the projected recovery area, but the others remained in close contact with “The Champ.”

As planned, the aircraft carrier departed Mayport and sailed into position for the recovery operation about 300 miles east-southeast of the Cape. However, inclement weather forced the launch to be delayed, and there was a further delay two days later before the countdown finally picked up again on the morning of Friday, 5 May.

Because of their advantageous view from Pri-Fly, Cdr. Skidmore had arranged for those who worked there to pool their film with NASA photographer Dean Conger. A well-respected photographer for the National Geographic magazine, Conger was “on loan” to NASA as one of the official photographers to record the recovery operation. Appreciating the historic nature of Alan Shepard’s flight, Skidmore set up extensive photographic coverage by positioning volunteer officers and enlisted men at different vantage points on the ship so that the recovery could be recorded on film. When this innovation was combined with the work of the NASA photographers, it resulted in a magnificent, sweeping coverage of the occasion.

After discussing the expected capsule retrieval with senior crewmembers of ships in the recovery Task Force, NASA Space Task Group representatives Martin Byrnes, Robert Thompson, and Charles Tynan determined that the ship’s crewmen assigned to handle the spacecraft were not fully trained in the specifics of what was expected of them, so they initiated a brief education program for the crew. This included the provi­sion of printed information sheets and screening a film on the recovery of the capsule containing chimpanzee Ham earlier that year. According to This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, published by NASA, “Tynan also carefully briefed each man charged with capsule-handling duties on his particular role.” [2] The carrier’s

recovery team consisted primarily of enlisted crewmembers led by the Flight Deck Officer and a number of enlisted Chief Petty Officers of the Air Department; none of whom were at the Tynan briefing. Those in attendance were senior officers who then gave orders and instructions to the carrier’s recovery team. Strangely, not even the Air Officer who led the Air Department was invited to the Tynan briefing.

A comprehensive report on the pre-flight and post-flight medical condition of Alan Shepard was prepared by:

• Carmault B. Jackson, Jr., M. D. Aerospace Medical Branch

• William K. Douglas, M. D., Astronaut Flight Surgeon

• James F. Culver, M. D., USAF Aerospace Medical Center, Brooks AFB, Texas

• George Ruff, M. D., University of Pennsylvania

• Edward C. Knoblock, Ph. D., Walter Reed Army Medical Center

• Ashton Graybiel, M. D., USN School of Aviation Medicine, Pensacola, Florida

and in part, their report reads:

The first post-flight physical examination was performed aboard the aircraft car­rier Lake Champlain. Blood and urine specimens were collected and the pilot was asked to begin debriefing in the form of free dictation. Three hours from liftoff, Astronaut Shepard was taken to Grand Bahama Island by aircraft from the carrier. On arrival at this remote island site, he seemed quietly elated and offered no complaints. His own statement of general fitness included “a wonder­ful flight,” “everything went well,” “I feel fine.”

The psychiatrist at the time of his interview, which actually took place after the next physical examination, believed that the “subject felt calm and self-pos­sessed. Some degree of excitement and exhilaration was noted. He was unusu­ally cheerful and expressed delight that his performance during the flight had actually been better than he expected. It became apparent that he looked upon the flight as a difficult task about which he was confident, but could not be sure, of success. He was more concerned about performing effectively than about external dangers. He reported moderate apprehension during the pre-flight period, which was consciously controlled by focusing his thoughts on technical details of his job. As a result, he felt very little anxiety during the immediate pre-flight period. After launch, he was preoccupied with his duties and felt con­cern only when he fell behind on one of his tasks. There were no unusual sensa­tions regarding weightlessness, isolation, or separation from Earth. Again, no abnormalities of thought or impairment of intellectual functions were noted.”

In physical terms, the physicians identified only minor fluctuations between the examinations given pre-flight, post-flight, and on Grand Bahama Island. One part of their reports reads:

Mild dehydration and early signs of heat exhaustion were also evident when an individual in an impermeable Mercury pressure suit was not adequately ven­tilated. With Redstone training profiles, there has been no nystagmus as a result of high noise levels; there has been no vibration injury …. From the material obtained, it is obvious that a brief sortie has been made into a new environment. Similarities between this sortie and a previous training experience were noted.

No conclusions have been drawn except that in this flight the pilot appears to have paid a very small physiologic price for his journey [8].

By 31 January 1961, the United States was a nation undergoing radical cultural and ethical upheaval. Changes were swirling in the wind. On that day James Meredith, an African-American, applied for admission to the all-white University of Mississippi, known as “Ole Miss,” and so began a hard-fought legal action that would end in the desegregation of the university and the post-graduation shooting and wounding of Meredith by a white supremacist. That same day, a federal district court ordered the admission of two black students into Georgia University, and the State of Georgia repealed its long-standing laws which segregated the races in its public schools. The university was subsequently desegregated.

Also on that memorable date in American history, space science was on the verge of taking a huge leap forward as a Redstone rocket stood fully fueled on launch pad LC-5 at Cape Canaveral. All was in readiness for the launch of a suborbital mission designated Mercury-Redstone 2 (MR-2). It was hoped that this flight would provide the first major test of several new designs in the Mercury spacecraft, including the environmental control system (ECS), as well as a pneumatic landing bag intended to absorb much of the impact shock when a returning capsule hit the water.

But this time, as America prepared to send a man into space, there was a fully trained passenger on board the spacecraft, namely a 37^-pound chimpanzee. NASA has always had qualms about giving personable names to animals involved in space research missions lest there be fatal accidents, so during the flight training process – as with his fellow chimps – this one was only supposed to be identified as “Subject 65.” He had been allocated this number instead of the mildly offensive “Chop Chop Chang” by which he had been known early in his training, but to his handlers he was unoffi­cially called Ham.

Immediately after his safe recovery, the chimpanzee would be publicly identified in the agency’s press releases not by his subject number, but as Ham. According to popular history, this name was derived from the acronym for the Holloman Aero Medical Research Laboratory, but as his chief handler, M/Sgt. Edward C. Dittmer,

wryly pointed out to the author, “Our lab commander at that time was a Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton Blackshear, whose friends called him Ham, so there may have been a dual purpose behind that particular name.”

Dittmer also revealed that he enjoyed a great relationship with Ham. “He was won­derful: he performed so well and was a remarkably easy chimp to handle. I’d hold him and he was just like a little kid. He’d put his arm around me and he’d play… he was a well-tempered chimp.” [1]

With ever more of their training concentrated at Cape Canaveral, NASA eventually relocated the astronauts to crew quarters on the west side of the Cape, several miles from the Redstone launch complex. As at Langley, the quarters were nothing special; they were situated in an old concrete block Air Force hangar known as Hangar S, in which the Martin Company people had prepared the Vanguard rockets for launch. As with all such hangars at the Cape, its floor plan was very basic, having a two-story high-bay area in the center between two large sliding doors, and regular access doors at each end. Offices or stage rooms were located on both sides of each floor.

Dr. William Douglas, the astronauts’ personal physician, was aided by a level­headed young Air Force nurse named Delores O’Hara, who would not only tend to any illnesses or injuries they or their families suffered, but eventually become a true and sympathetic confidante to the men and their wives. Dee O’Hara, as she is better known, was an Idaho-born 2nd lieutenant in the Air Force Nurse Corps serving at the nearby Patrick Air Force Base Hospital, when her commanding officer asked if she would like to be the nurse assigned to NASA’s Mercury astronauts.

When the news leaked out of her assignment, the press began to hail Dee as the nation’s “Space Nurse” and “Astronaut Nurse,” but she insisted that the only proper designation was aerospace nurse.

One of the first major responsibilities assigned to young Dee O’Hara was to help establish what was referred to as the Aeromed lab in Hangar S.

“I always felt the Mercury program was launched from Hangar S because we were all crammed in this one little hangar. The suit rooms were there, the capsule was there – everything existed in Hangar S. And so I set up the Aeromed lab. It was a long string of rooms. It was very narrow. We had a hallway, the rooms, and then it overlooked the floor of the hangar, if you will. I had a lab area, an exam room area, then there was my little office. Then we had a large room, a carpeted room where the suits were, the suit couch was there, and all of the suit checkouts were done there. And then you went to the next room, which was kind of set up as a conference room for them, and then past that was a little lounge area with a La-Z-Boy chair… it was considered crew quarters if you will. Primitive, but it was considered crew quarters. And in the next room, and these are all very small rooms, were bunk beds for if the astronauts stayed there. Most of them stayed in motels in Cocoa Beach, but if they were training late, or working late in the capsule, they could at least bunk there and sleep the night, and not have to drive. Because I think it was like nineteen miles or so back into Cocoa Beach. Granted, that’s not a long drive, but you’re out in the middle of nowhere; I mean of course it’s all built up now, but back then it was not. I think the first motel bar was the Polaris Lounge or something like that, and so it was kind of distant to the Holiday Inn where most of them stayed.” [24]

Despite their fame, the pioneering years of space flight were often rather less than glamorous for the Mercury astronauts. Shepard recalls the early ignominy of living alongside a colony of space-trained primates. Back then, the astronauts knew that they were being forced to play second fiddle to the chimpanzees. “The crew quarters at Hangar S were Spartan, austere, nondescript, and totally uncomfortable,” Shepard wrote. “Our sleeping quarters could be reached only by going down a long, poorly lit hallway, an unpleasant walk during which we were assailed by the hoots, screeches and screams of a small colony of apes housed out back. In the end, we decided the humiliation of stepping aside for a monkey was bad enough. We certainly didn’t have to live with the howling dung-flingers.” As Dee O’Hara suggested, most of the astro­nauts moved into a Holiday Inn at Cocoa Beach [25].

Apart from their overall work on the Mercury program, each of the astronauts was handed an assignment which would become his specialized field. Each then shared vital information on his subject with the others. Scott Carpenter was given capsule communications and navigation; Gordon Cooper, engineering developments to adapt the Redstone missile to launch the manned capsule on suborbital flights; John Glenn was to monitor the layout of the capsule interior, as well as its instrumentation and controls; Gus Grissom was assigned the capsule’s automatic pilot; Wally Schirra got the capsule’s environmental control system; Deke Slayton looked ahead to mating the spacecraft with the Atlas booster for orbital flights; and Alan Shepard was given responsibility for the capsule recovery and rescue program.

McDonnell’s Pad Leader, Guenter Wendt, was hard at work preparing for the first manned flight, but concerns were still cropping up that no one had considered, such as an effective means of evacuating an astronaut from a spacecraft in peril whilst on the launch pad.

“As we moved closer to our manned launches, it came to our attention that we had no means of egress for the astronaut if an emergency occurred while the launch tower was parked several hundred feet away. I think it was Bob Munger who came up with the idea of using the ‘cherry picker.’ This was a yellow, crane-like rig on a long flatbed truck. It was operated by remote control. Its long boom could remain in position close to the spacecraft until right before the launch. In an emergency such as a fire on the pad, the astronaut could open the hatch and climb into the metal cage on the boom’s end. We would then swing him out of harm’s way. It was a bit crude, but it did the job.” [26] “MY NAME, JOSE JIMENEZ”

If there was one person in his life that Alan Shepard truly came to admire after he was selected as an astronaut, it was a short, stocky fellow who was born in Quincy, Massachusetts with the tongue-twisted name of William Szathmary. Adopting the stage name of Bill Dana, the comedian became an instant hit with the astronauts, and in particular Shepard, due to his hilarious routines centered on a bumbling, nervous astronaut character named “Jose Jimenez.”

Shepard could recite many of Dana’s routines off by heart, and would often slip into the Jimenez character during training in order to relieve any pent-up anxieties. The astro­nauts soon got to know Dana well, and embraced him as one of their own. With their enthusiastic blessing he was forever endowed with the title of the “eighth astronaut.”

Shepard once spoke about the origin of his close affinity with the much-loved comedian. “There was this TV program and I was crazy about it. It was so close to the way that we see things when we’re in a good mood. In short, I liked him so much I recorded it on tape, then I took the tape to Cape Canaveral and during the Ranger launching, at a moment when they stopped the countdown because something was wrong, I put the tape on at full volume there in the control room. Sometimes we like to have a little fun too. It releases the tension.”

As Wally Schirra recalled, “Dana was doing a one-night stand in Cocoa Beach near Cape Canaveral, and Al Shepard and I were in the audience. When Dana asked for a straight man, Al volunteered. Then I did, too. What we really liked about Dana is that he made himself the butt of his jokes. Like Bob Hope, also a dear friend of the astro­nauts, he did not get laughs at the expense of someone else.” [27]

One skit which Shepard was especially fond of centered on an interview between a reporter (played straight by Don Hickley) and Jose Jimenez, chief astronaut of the Interplanetary Forces of the U. S.A. In part, the routine goes like this:

DH: The gentleman you’re about to meet is the most important man in any of our

lives. He’s the United States’ officer who has been sent into outer space. I’m referring to the chief astronaut with the United States Interplanetary Expeditionary Force, and here he is now. How do you do sir. May we have your name?

JJ: My name, Jose Jimenez.

DH: And you’re the chief astronaut with the United States Interplanetary

Expeditionary Force?

JJ: I am the chief astronaut, with the United States… Interplanetary… My name

Jose Jimenez.

DH: Mr. Jimenez could you tell us a little about your space suit?

JJ: Yes, it’s very uncomfortable.

DH: How much did the space suit cost?

JJ: That space suit cost 18,000 dollars.

DH: 18,000 dollars? That seems rather expensive.

JJ: Well it has two pair of pants… so that’s only 9,000 dollars apiece.

DH: I’ve been noticing this, Mr. Jimenez. What is this called? A crash helmet?

JJ: Oh, I hope not.

DH: I want to ask you: What is the most important thing in rocket travel?

JJ: To me, the most important thing in the rocket travel is the blast off.

DH: The blast off?

JJ: I always take a blast before I take off (pause) otherwise I wouldn’t get in that thing.

DH: And I just wonder what you’ll do to entertain yourself during those long, lonely,

solitary, hours when you’re all by yourself?

JJ: Well, I plan to cry a lot.

DH: I just wonder if there are a few words that you’d like to say to the people of the

United States?

JJ: Yes, there are a few words that I’d like to say…

DH: Please go ahead.

JJ: People of the United States of America… please don’t let them do this to me!

While there was often a mischievous, even impish side to Alan Shepard, he took the flying aspect of his new vocation very seriously. Those who knew him best often recall there were two sides to the man: there was Al who loved a good practical joke, and then there was the serious, pragmatic Commander Shepard who could cut people down with a withering stare when they did not meet the high expectations which he demanded in regard to their job functions. If he was in the latter mood, people only approached him with great trepidation.

“Al was the most complex of the original astronauts,” Gordon Cooper revealed in his memoirs. “He seemed to have two distinct personalities: one the charming and beguiling jokester who introduced Jose Jimenez – comedian Bill Dana’s popular alter ego – and his ‘Please don’t send me’ astronaut act into our everyday lives; and the other which came out when the chips were down and was so competitive as to be ruthless. We all knew to watch our backs when that Al was around.” [28]

The day of the MR-3 launch left Ed Killian with many memories. “Air Boss Howard Skidmore was in Pri-Fly with his several cameras. I’d never seen so many observers on the island’s superstructure.[2] Every exterior catwalk – every vantage point – was crammed with photographers, reporters, scientists, NASA technicians, and military representatives of all the branches. The crew appeared to be going about its regular routine. There were no more personnel visible on deck than would have been on duty for regular flight operations. Then came an announcement from the ship’s 1MC [the main circuit] loudspeaker that the astronaut was in the capsule and the launch was counting down. The announcement then said that the crew was permitted topside on the flight deck to view the [splashdown] event.” They were to observe the recovery standing aft of a raised arresting gear cable, and aft of the island. Marine guards had been posted opposite the crew to keep them from moving forward prior to the arrival of the Marine helicopter bearing the spacecraft – more as a matter of safety than one of security.

“Following this progress report on the 1MC, the ship’s crew suddenly started to appear on the flight deck. They literally poured out of every hatch, filled every deck catwalk and spilled onto the flight deck. Hundreds of them, in all manner of jersey colors; red for gas handlers and ordnance men; yellow for plane directors; green for electricians and aviation technicians; blue for plane spotters; brown for ship’s hangar deck crews. Sailors in blue dungarees, cooks in cook-caps, the dirtiest First Division bosuns, and sailors of every discipline on the ship poured out onto the flight deck aft of the island, their eyes agog at all the activity on the forward flight deck area. Some crew members whose duty stations were on the island were able to get on the island catwalks to observe the recovery.”

With the launch imminent, Marine Corps Sikorsky HUS-1 Seahorse helicopters on the deck forward of the island were prepped for liftoff, ready to proceed to the recov­ery site which was expected to be several miles off the carrier’s port bow.

Marine Corps lieutenants Wayne Koons from Lyons, Kansas, and George Cox from Eustis, Florida, had been attached to squadron HMR(L)-262. They were aboard

“The Champ” on temporary assigned duty, having been selected to fly the primary recovery helicopter. Two other Marine Corps choppers were also in the same flight, and ready to act in a backup capacity if necessary. Koons had participated in three previous at-sea retrievals; two as copilot and one as pilot. Cox had been involved in the recovery of the MR-2 capsule that carried chimpanzee Ham on 31 January, just three months ear­lier. About two months prior to the flight of MR-3, Koons and Cox had participated in live training with Shepard, Gus Grissom and John Glenn. In this training the egress trainer was placed in the “back river” at Langley AFB, Virginia, with an astronaut inside. Three live retrievals were made, one with each astronaut, in this calm water environment.

In his first public comment on the space shot the day before, Shepard told newsmen, “The only complaint I have is that the flight wasn’t long enough.”

Grissom had a chance to relax with Shepard over a meal that day, and ask specific questions about the flight. He was next in line to fly, and his spacecraft was already under­going final checks and tests for the MR-4 mission, slated for July. Two major changes had been made to his spacecraft, which he had already named Liberty Bell 7. In addition to its periscope, Freedom 7had had two small portholes. Instead, Liberty Bell 7 had an enlarged, trapezoidal window to provide for better observations by the astronaut. And Freedom 7’s awkward, latch-operated hatch had been replaced by an explosive side hatch to enable the astronaut to make a rapid egress in the event that the capsule started to take on water. This was an innovative feature that all too soon would cause grievous and ongoing concerns for Grissom.

Meanwhile, reaction to Shepard’s flight in Communist capitals tended towards admiration for the man, tepid praise for the feat itself, and smug comments stressing that his flight could not compete historically or technically with that of Yuri Gagarin the previous month. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev indicated an awareness of the American space flight without mentioning it specifically. In lauding Gagarin and his orbital flight in a speech given at Erevan in Soviet Armenia, he noted Gagarin had flown “around the globe precisely – not just up and down.”

The official Soviet news agency, TASS, reported, “The launching carried out in the United States of America [on] Friday of a rocket with a man aboard cannot be com­pared with the flight of the Soviet spaceship Vostok which carried the world’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. During Shepard’s training for the flight, the American press itself acknowledged that from the point of view of technical complexity and scientific value, this flight would be very inferior to the flight of Gagarin.

“For example, Time magazine emphasized that the American project of sending a man into space was designed only to put a man into a short trajectory which is consid­erably less than the complicated flight of the Vostok round the Earth. To begin with, the Soviet ship orbited around the Earth at a maximum height of [203 miles]. The cosmonaut made a full orbit around our planet and only then landed in the pre-set area of the territory of the U. S.S. R. The rocket with the man on board which was launched in the United States of America is in reality like an intercontinental missile, since it covered a limited distance of the Earth’s surface at a maximum height of 115 miles.

“The capsule which carried the American astronaut fell at a distance of only 302 miles from the site of the launching. The entire flight of the American rocket took only 15 minutes, while Yuri Gagarin spent 108 in his orbiting flight round the Earth.

“The following fact shows the principal difference between his flight and that of the American rocket: Yuri Gagarin was in a state of weightlessness during the entire time his spaceship was in orbit, but the American astronaut was in this state only several minutes.” [9]

Not surprisingly, no mention was made of the fact that Gagarin’s spacecraft was controlled from Earth throughout his flight, whereas Shepard had manipulated his spacecraft’s roll, pitch and yaw movements using manual controls.

Soviet-sponsored broadcasts in Czechoslovakia also dismissed Shepard’s shot as “primitive and outmoded,” although Czech and Hungarian broadcasters recognized the man himself as a heroic figure. Meanwhile, the Red Chinese press in Hong Kong was disparaging. The Communist Commercial Daily described the flight as nothing more than a publicity stunt [10].

On Grand Bahama Island, all the tests showed that Alan Shepard was in perfect physical and mental health. Chris Kraft was NASA’s first flight director, serving in Mission Control, and he later said that he was also pleased with Shepard’s physical condition throughout the flight. “The only medical data that raised eyebrows was Shepard’s heart rate, spiking at 220 and holding above 150 for several minutes. Both numbers were above anything seen before in Shepard’s medical condition – even dur­ing stress tests and centrifuge runs. But the surgeons weren’t that worried. They’d recently gotten a report on race car drivers showing heart rates even higher, and lasting for several hours. Even sucking in a bit of carbon monoxide didn’t affect their high­speed driving. Based on that, Shepard’s heart rate seemed well within the norm for a person whose adrenaline was flowing.” [11]

Ham was a Pan troglodyte chimpanzee, said (through dental analysis) to have been born around July 1957, and was one of several animals captured by trappers at a very young age in the dense tropical rainforests and savannah of the French Cameroons in Equatorial Africa. According to an article in the April 1962 issue of The Airman, three members of the U. S. Air Force had flown to the French Cameroons to pick up a num­ber of animals.

As one of these men recalled, “When the chimps were captured, they were very small and usually ranged in age from 10 to 18 months. The natives tie them with strips of bamboo when they capture them, and make no particular arrangements for holding or feeding the young animals. When the vendor, who sells them to us, finally obtains them, they are quite heavily parasitized and malnourished.” [2]

Following their transportation to the United States in 1959, Ham and the other young chimpanzees were temporarily housed at the now-defunct Rare Bird Farm in Miami, Florida. Eventually this latest batch of chimps was delivered to Holloman AFB’s Air Development Center in New Mexico to join an established colony, where they were assigned identifying subject numbers and unofficial training names such as Caledonia, Chu, Duane, Elvis, George, Jim, Little Jim, Minnie, Paleface, Pattie, Roscoe, and Tiger.

Dittmer was one of several aeromedical technicians assisting in bioastronautics research for the Air Force Systems Command at Holloman AFB, reporting directly to Capt. David Simons at the Space Biology Branch of the 6571st Aero Medical Research Laboratory.

Another member of the Holloman research team was Dr. James P. Henry, who had earlier been involved in studies of blood action under heavy gravity weights and had conducted pioneering work in developing high-altitude protective clothing. Dr. Henry

was appointed as an Air Force representative to a NASA committee charged with defining and setting in motion plans and procedures for animal flights within Project Mercury. He was assigned the role of coordinator for these flights under Lt. Col. Stanley White, a physician and the leader of the Mercury medical team, and he became part of NASA’s Space Task Group at Langley Field, Virginia.

Henry’s specific responsibilities included the establishment of an animal flight test protocol, developing the operational flight plans, and overseeing the design and manu­facture of the flight hardware. He would also monitor the chimpanzee regime at Holloman, where personnel from the research laboratory had been training animals for space flight since July 1959. Initially, the plan was to train and test ten suitable chimpanzees from the colony. As with earlier programs, they began by incrementally conditioning the animals to accept the restraint conditions to which they would be subjected in a spacecraft [3].

Ed Dittmer became involved in working with the chimpanzee colony under the Space Biology Branch at Holloman, where he was the officer in charge. “Back then we got these small chimps from Africa – they were about a year old – and we started a training project,” he recalled. “Of course a lot of things were classified back then, so

we had no real idea what we were training these chimps for, but we were teaching them to sit up and work in centrifuges, so it was quite evident that we were training them for use in missiles.

“We started out by teaching them to sit in these little metal chairs, set about four or five feet apart so that they couldn’t play with each other. We’d dress them in little nylon web jackets which went over their chests, and then fasten them to their chair. We’d keep them in the chairs for about five minutes or so and feed them apples and other fruit, and we’d progressively put them in their seats for longer periods each day. Eventually they’d just sit there all day and play quite happily.” [4]

Each of the chimpanzees was kitted out with one of these nylon “spacesuits,” and soon came to accept wearing them. During lengthy training exercises, a diaper would also be worn beneath the nylon suit.

Robert Gilruth was faced with a difficult decision, but one that he had to make in order to ramp up more specific mission-oriented training. As the head of the Space Task Group it fell to him to decide which of the seven astronauts would be assigned to attempt the nation’s first manned space flight. Whilst he did have one person in mind, he felt it only fair to reinforce his opinion by running a selection poll amongst the men themselves. And so, in December 1960, they were all asked to vote for the person – excluding themselves – that they thought was the best overall candidate for this historic mission.

It would be a critical decision, as celebrated author Tom Wolfe wrote in his epic about the Mercury astronauts, The Right Stuff. “When they assembled in [Gilruth’s] office, he told them he wanted them to take a little ‘peer vote,’ along the following lines: ‘if you can’t make the first flight yourself, which man do you think should make it?’ Peer votes were not unknown in the military. They had been used among seniors at West Point and Annapolis for some time. For that matter, during the selection process for astronaut, the groups of finalists at Lovelace and Wright-Patterson took peer votes. But peer votes had never amounted to anything more than what they wereprima facie: an indication of how men at the same level regarded one another, whether for reasons of professionalism or friendship or jealousy or whatever. Pilots regarded peer votes as a waste of time, because a man either had the right stuff in the air or he didn’t, and a military career, particularly among those with ‘the uncritical willingness to face danger,’ was not a personality con­test. But there was something about Bob Gilruth’s deep concern… They were to think the whole thing over and drop them off at Gilruth’s office.” [29]

As Deke Slayton later recalled, “I think he just wanted to know if we agreed with his judgment.”

For Shepard, teamwork was always secondary to his own ambition to be the first American astronaut to fly. “I knew there was a lot of talent there, and I knew it was going to be a tough fight to win the prize,” he told interviewer Roy Neal. “It was an interesting situation, because I was friendly with several of them. And on the other hand. there was always a sense of a little bit of reservation, not being totally frank with each other, because there was this very strong sense of competition… seven guys going for that one job.” [30]

They would not have to wait very long. The following month, on the afternoon of 19 January 1961, just a day before the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy, each of the seven received a phone call from Gilruth requiring them to assemble in their Langley office at five o’clock for an important meeting. Each man knew this was probably the day that one of their number would be handed that precious first flight.

An air of nervous tension filled the office as the astronauts fidgeted, waiting for Gilruth to arrive, trying to crack feeble jokes but with heart beat rates rising as five o’clock came and went. Finally, he entered the sparse office, closing the door behind him. Knowing that the seven men would be eager for his decision, he simply stood before them, cleared his throat, and spoke.

“Well, you know we’ve got to decide who’s going to make the first flight, and I don’t want to pinpoint publicly at this stage one individual,” he began. “Within the organization I want everyone to know that we will designate the first flight and the second flight and the backup pilot, but beyond that we won’t make any public decisions.” Then he paused momentarily. “Shepard gets the first flight, Grissom gets the second flight, and Glenn is the backup for both of these two suborbital missions. Any questions?”

There was only a stunned silence in the room. No one dared to speak as they each digested the news. Gilruth paused a few moments, and as he turned to leave the room added, “Thank you very much. Good luck!”

Shepard recalls those few seconds after Gilruth left as a time of joy, triumph, and a wonderful sense of accomplishment, but he also knew he mustn’t let this show. Six fine colleagues were coming to grips with the baffling news that they had not been considered the best candidate for the gold-ring job that they had all so badly wanted. With mixed emotions of elation and a sense of empathy coursing through him, it was tough simply being there. “I did not say anything for about twenty seconds or so,” he later stated. “I just looked at the floor. When I looked up, everyone in the room was staring at me. I was excited and happy, of course; but it was not a moment to crow. Each of the other fellows had very much wanted to be first himself. And now, after almost two years of hard work and training, that chance was gone.” [31]

The comradeship that would define the Mercury astronauts soon took over, as one by one the others moved over to congratulate Shepard, shaking his hand with smiles and encouraging words that could barely mask their dismay before leaving the room to come to terms with their bitter disappointment.

When he came home with the news that evening Shepard said to his wife, Louise, “Lady, you can’t tell anyone, but you have your arms around the man who’ll be first in space!” “Who let a Russian in here?” she replied with a wide smile. It was a better joke than she knew [32].