Category Freedom 7

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]

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]

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].

Wayne Koons was a farm boy from Rice County, Kansas. After leaving from high school he attended Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas, where he received degrees in physics and mathematics before electing to join the U. S. Marine Corps and then opting to become a helicopter pilot. He recalls one day in 1959 while stationed in MCAS New River, North Carolina, when a squadron clerk ran up to him and said the commanding officer wanted to see him urgently.

“I was literally apprehensive as I went over to the hangar. The skipper told me they had had an enquiry about using helicopters to retrieve astronauts and spacecraft from the ocean. And I kept thinking, ‘What do you mean – astronauts?’” The term was new to him [3]. He later learned that he had been chosen for this task because he was the only pilot of 250 possible candidates to have a technical degree. Helicopters had been selected for the sea recovery operation because NASA’s engineers were not overly confident in the seaworthiness of the Mercury capsules, while flight surgeons were not confident about the physical shape that a person might be in after making a flight in space. “They wanted to get the astronaut and the spacecraft out of the water quickly,” Koons explained [4].

Lt. Koons was assigned as Project Officer to the retrieval squadron of the Space Task Group, and used his experience and technical abilities to assist in developing recovery techniques and procedures for the yet-to-be-built Mercury spacecraft. His duties included training the squadron pilots. Another part of his assignment involved the design and testing of a special reinforced loop on top of the capsule to enable the helicopter’s copilot to snag it using a long pole with a curved attachment on the end known as the “shepherd’s hook.”

As Wayne Koons described the procedure to the author, “The shepherd’s hook was attached to the lower end of a steel cable, which was engaged in the spacecraft lifting loop by the copilot using a long pole. The upper end of the cable was locked into the helicopter’s cargo hook before the helicopter lifted off from the ship. Lifting the spacecraft was accomplished by raising the helicopter. Once the spacecraft was on the ship’s padded skid, the helicopter cargo hook was opened, thus releasing the cable which stayed with the spacecraft.” [5]

In order to get the procedure right, countless training test flights were conducted using full-size representations of the Mercury spacecraft. In one test, a “boilerplate” cap­sule was dropped from 1,000 feet over Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Once it had parachuted

into the water, the capsule was retrieved by the crew of a twin-engine helicopter using a “shepherd’s hook” in what NASA later described as a “successful” drop.

The squadron’s commanding officer informed Koons of the decision to have him serve as the lead pilot for this mission. “He asked me if I had a particular choice in copilot, and I said, ‘I sure do,’ because at that point I had been working regularly for several months with a copilot named George Cox. George and I just really got along well. We were kind of like twins. You know, we didn’t have to say everything that we communicated. We thought alike, worked well together, and were comfort­able with each other. And George was really eager to do it, enjoyed working the mission. So that was the basic set up.”

Eventually Koons found out that the retrieval would take place using an aircraft carrier as the destination. “We did some flight training right after we got aboard, and the Air Boss had set the flight deck up and put the skid with the mattresses on it up close to the bow. So we went off, and one of our helicopters dropped the boilerplate into the water, and then we went and picked it up and delivered it back to the ship.” When this proved a difficult operation visually for the pilot, the Air Boss rearranged his flight deck, shifting airplanes around and placing the skid on the rear of the flight deck. “So then when we tried it that way, it was much better, because I had the island in my field of view, and out the front windshield I could see the front part of the flight deck. So it made it much easier, a lot easier to maintain a good visual refer­ence while I was setting the thing down.” [6]

Along with Capt. Allen K. Daniel, Jr., Koons recovered the MR-1A capsule from the Atlantic on 19 December 1960 and safely deposited it aboard the aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge (CV-45).

Despite their intense training, the helicopter team often struggled with the payload capability of the aircraft balanced against the weight of the spacecraft. As Koons put it, “The dry weight of the spacecraft with astronaut was well over one ton. When the project started, the spacecraft weight was estimated to be about 1,800 pounds. As the design matured, the weight increased to the point that the complete retrieval weight for MR-3 approached 2,900 pounds. The helicopters were stripped of all unnecessary weight. The extra seats, the APU [auxiliary power unit], heater, some avionics, and the (only) life raft were removed for Mercury retrieval flights. Also, the fuel load was tailored. To explain: The downrange helicopters were tasked to go as far as 115 nauti­cal miles from the ship to retrieve a spacecraft. To accomplish this, the fuel load was normally set for a retrieval close aboard the ship. This reduced load gave the helicop­ter the lift margin needed to accomplish the capsule retrieval. If the spacecraft landed some distance from the ship, once the distance was known, the fuel load was adjusted to optimize the lift capability at the spacecraft, with adequate reserves for the return. The fuel calculations assumed the ship proceeded toward the spacecraft at its best speed after the launch of the helicopters.

“This scenario happened on the MR-2 flight. Range to the spacecraft was about 100 nautical miles. A big problem arose when the ship lost boiler power and went dead in the water after the launch of the helicopters, and we were ‘running on fumes’ by the time we actually got back to the ship with the spacecraft.” [7]

After dinner on Saturday night, a relaxed Shepard joined others on wooden benches at the open-air movie lot at the base for a screening of The Grass is Always Greener, a comedy starring Cary Grant.

The next morning, once again casually dressed and indistinguishable from several hundred other men at the air base, Shepard had breakfast with Grissom in the mess hall. By tacit consent, everyone on the base had agreed to allow him to simply go his way normally without any bustle or crowding. It would also be his last day of leisure on the off-shore refuge.

On Monday, under orders from the President, Shepard flew to Washington, D. C., along with the other astronauts. At Andrews AFB, where they landed in suburban Maryland at 9:33 a. m., Shepard was the last one off the airplane. Waiting to meet him at the foot of the ramp was his wife Louise, her parents Phil and Julia Brewer, his parents Alan and Renza, and his sister, Polly Sherman. There were hugs, kisses and hand­shakes before they were ushered over to a microphone set up nearby so that he could briefly address a crowd of almost 1,000 cheering people who had gathered to greet him. He thanked everyone at the base for their welcome and delivered a few words of encouragement prior to escorting his wife to the waiting helicopters that would quickly convey them to the south lawn of the White House and a reception by the President and First Lady at which he would receive NASA’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal. The only previous such medal had been awarded two years earlier to John W. Crowley for his 38-year contribution to the nation’s aircraft, spacecraft and missile programs.

The presentation ceremony took place on a specially built platform in the Rose Garden, just outside the White House, and was conducted in a very relaxed manner. Kennedy and Shepard shook hands more like college classmates than President and hero. Shepard was relaxed and easy during the moments of greeting before it began. As he remarked, “I thought last Friday was a thrilling day, but this surpasses it.” [12]

After the USS Lake Champlain had returned to Quonset Bay following the retrieval of Alan Shepard, his parents, Alan and Renza, were given a grand tour of the ship, which included a visit to the carrier’s hangar bay where a mockup of Freedom 7 was perched on the actual platform which had held their son’s spacecraft after recovery. (Photo courtesy of Larry Kreitzberg)

Alan and Louise Shepard meet the Kennedys, with Vice President Lyndon Johnson looking on. In center of the picture is NASA’s Public Affairs Officer, John ‘Shorty’ Powers. (Photo courtesy of Dean Conger/NASA)

With his fellow Mercury astronauts looking on, Shepard shakes hands with President Kennedy at the White House reception. (Photo courtesy of Dean Conger/NASA)

In his preamble, Kennedy said the nation was proud of Shepard and his fellow astro­nauts, noting that his flight was made under conditions of full publicity in a free society. The United States had “risked much and gained much,” he stated. This was meant as an emphatic reminder that the Soviet Union, operating in a closed society, was following a tradition of secrecy in its space program that stood in spectacular contrast to the methods endorsed by the American nation. The President also paid a grateful tribute to the other astronauts and to the NASA officials who had brought the agency together and carried it through to that point. They were key members of the team that made the flight such a great success. To the 500 dignitaries gathered in the Rose Garden, the President said, “We should give them all a hand.” And then, to distinguish the astronauts from the assembled bureaucrats, he jokingly described them as “the tanned and healthy ones – the others are Washington employees.”

Kennedy then read the NASA citation, which pointed out that Shepard’s flight “was an outstanding contribution to the advancement of human knowledge and space tech­nology and a demonstration of man’s capabilities in suborbital space flights.” He then described the medal as “a civilian award for a great civilian accomplishment.” [13]

At this point an air of informality took over, adding a special note of its own to the ceremony. During the presentation Kennedy fumbled for a moment, dropping the medal with its blue and white ribbon onto the wooden floor of the platform. But he quickly retrieved the medal and handed it to Shepard, saying he was proud to present “this decoration – which has gone from the ground up,” thereby creating a storm of laughter. But then, instead of following custom and pinning the medal on Shepard’s coat, Kennedy simply handed it over, saying, “Here.” After Shepard had responded in acknowledgement of the honor bestowed on him, Jacqueline Kennedy whispered to her husband that he ought to have pinned the medal onto the astronaut’s jacket. Taking it back from Shepard, the President quipped, “Let me pin it on; I’ll do my duty.” [14]

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.

Much to the frustration of the media, waiting for news of the astronaut selected to make the first space flight that year, NASA would only announce that of the original seven, only three – John Glenn, Gus Grissom and Alan Shepard – had been selected as prime candidates for the first Mercury-Redstone mission, and the name of the man who would fly would not be revealed until nearer the time. The other two, as well as the remaining four men, would fly later space shots.

For Glenn and Grissom, and particularly Shepard, the training was stepped up to prepare them for that first, crucial flight. Shepard would find the pace particularly grueling at times.

“Early in 1961, the Cape, as it was simply called, was the most exciting place in the country. It was also a very tough place to work. Despite the glowing press reports about how well things were going with the astronauts and the Mercury operations team, the reality was that conflict was a part of everyday life at Cape Canaveral. Arduous project schedules and the long wait to get up into space made us feel stifled and resentful.”

And then there was the matter of a primate making a suborbital flight ahead of an astronaut.

“The irony of playing second fiddle to a chimpanzee was particularly galling to us,” Shepard noted. “NASA had decided to send a chimp into space before sending me. I protested again and again, but NASA insisted the little ape go first. The agency meant well. But all I could think about were Russian boosters rolling to their pads for the first manned space flight.

“There were other frictions too. At the Cape I spent most of my time in a ‘proce­dures trainer.’ This was a replica of the actual spaceship that would boost me more than one hundred miles into space. It also duplicated the severe semi-supine flight position, with the pilot lying on his back, legs vertical to the knees and then dropped down so that he was shaped like a squared-off pretzel. No one liked the trainer. It was like taking a straight-backed chair, placing it on its back, and then ‘sitting’ in it. This is where the astronaut trained to reach all his instruments and controls until he could go through every motion of his scheduled flight with his eyes closed and never miss hitting the right button or lever.

“By late January events were coming down to the wire. As flight time neared, the practical joking that had helped keep us all sane faded away. A serious tone settled over the launch, support, flight, and recovery teams. Redstone, the booster rocket, was working well, and I was scheduled to be launched in about six more weeks.” [33]

As the day of the space shot drew nearer, Koons and Cox had to confer with media people on the USS Lake Champlain in order to coordinate the best possible coverage of the retrieval of Alan Shepard and his spacecraft.

One person who impressed Koons was National Geographic photographer Dean Conger. “He was part of the pool. He had been out with us on one prior mission, I think. Dean showed up with a camera that he asked to clamp onto the side of the helicopter, where it would be looking down as we did the retrieval. It had a wide – angle lens. I can’t remember how many exposures he said it had. It must have been just a standard thirty-six-exposure roll. But he said it was automatic, and he could set it up to take just one shot per second … it was actually on one of the little struts that held the [personnel] hoist. And the other thing, if we could just remember to turn it on when we started doing the pickup.” [8]

As Dean Conger recalled for the author, “Logically I wanted to be on the prime pickup chopper, but that was ruled out for weight reasons. They flew with only the pilot and copilot. When it came time to pick up the astronaut the copilot would leave the cockpit and go to the doorway to operate the winch.

“On another ship for an earlier flight [MR-2 with Ham] I talked with the Marine crew chief – unfortunately, I don’t remember his name – who was extremely helpful with my idea of placing a remote camera somewhere. He said that he could make a bracket. He welded together a bracket out of 2-inch strap iron which had a pocket to accept a Nikon fitted with a 250-exposure back, and we would run a cord down to a battery pack which was fastened to the side of the cabin door. I believe it was taped there. The Nikon battery pack only had a push button. The chief made a slip-on clip that the copilot would push in order to hold the button down for continuous shooting. It was all very crude, but it worked.

“The flight plan was as follows: When the capsule landed, a long antenna would deploy straight up. So the first maneuver was to fly in and the copilot, having left the cockpit, would snip off the antenna using an explosive bolt cutter on a long pole so that it wouldn’t interfere with the rotor blades. Then the chopper would circle back, stabilize the capsule, and lift the astronaut up. In testing, this had checked out to take about 10 minutes. In their flight plan, the copilot would push the camera switch as they approached to cut the antenna. The problem for me was that the film would run out in about 2.5 minutes. A technician on the ship said he would wire a resistor into the cord to slow down the camera. After the fact, Nikon said it ought not to have worked at all!” [9]

It was something of a gamble, but Dean Conger was an experienced, professional photographer determined that this particular day in history should be recorded for posterity with only the very best images.