Category Liberty Bell 7

“We are building and designing the capsules at the same time,” Edward (‘Bud’) Flesh commented at the time. Flesh was the McDonnell engineer in charge of the project. “The design is not complete until we turn out a capsule, and each capsule will be slightly different from the one before, depending on whether it will be a test model or will carry an animal or an astronaut.”21

The capsules were assembled in rooms that could have rivaled hospital wards for clean­liness. Technicians and engineers wore white clothing made of dust-free nylon, and shoes of white nylon. The rooms, also white, were air-filtered and temperature-controlled.

Psychologists, physiologists and engineers were all taking part in the design process, according to Fred Willis, one of the project engineers. “It would be silly, for example, to put a red warning light more than 50 degrees to the left or right of the man’s line of sight. Only the cones of our eyes see color, and the cones are not there for peripheral vision. A red light at the edge of our vision would not be recognized instantly as a danger signal. Maybe it seems a small point, but attention to detail like this makes the space ship as safe as a living room.”

One sticking point in the development of the first Mercury capsules was the subject of fitting viewing windows. Bud Flesh said it was a design problem that they had over­come. “As pilots, the astronauts are used to having a windshield,” he pointed out, “and even though it is probably more a psychological than a physical matter, we of course gave it to them.”22

Max Faget agreed on the subject of a viewing window – it was one of the design changes that had been unanimously demanded by the astronauts. “Oh, there was a big beef about that,” Faget told interviewer Jim Slade. “We had two little portholes about that big around; six-inch round quartz windows, one down here and one over here, and it wasn’t very good. And another thing we had is, in order to navigate, we had essentially – it was like a periscope, only actually it was optics to show them a virtual image here of the ground passing underneath them. We thought that was very important, that they see the ground so they could line it up with a reticule in there to make sure the vehicle wasn’t yawed. If they could see a piece of ground going right down along the center line, well they knew that they were headed right so when they fired the retro[rocket] off, they would be properly aligned. Actually, the [attitude] could be misaligned some fifteen or twenty degrees and it wouldn’t make that much difference. It would move the landing point further down range, but that’s about all. We had more than enough capacity [to retrieve the capsule]”.23

All seven astronauts visited the McDonnell plant in May 1959, where each man was assigned an appropriate systems engineer to provide individual presentations on the status of the different systems – their own particular part in them – and acquaint them with the people at McDonnell and the plant’s layout. After that they visited the Cape Canaveral launch site and trained at a number of military and medical facilities in accordance with the training program prepared for them by the STG. That August, for example, they were involved in human centrifuge tests at the Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, learning to cope with excessive g-forces and the accelerations associated with their flights into space and back. They were unanimous that the centrifuge, which they referred to as “The Wheel,” was the hardest part of their training to that time.

As Alan Shepard explained, “This thing – the centrifuge – puts you in what pilots call the ‘eyeballs-out’ position. It is like an oversize cream separator that flings you around the room, that sort of thing. If you fight it, it’s murder. You can easily black out and remain unconscious. When I come off that monster at Johnsville, every bone in my body aches.”

Scott Carpenter agreed with Shepard. “It’s important to master these g-forces because we fully expect to be operating the capsule controls during part of the flight. So far, we have all shown this capability under 9 Gs. But that’s assuming everything goes according to plan. If it doesn’t… well, let’s not talk about that.”

“Just say it is a real personal challenge,” added Shepard.24

In September the Mercury astronauts returned to the McDonnell plant to check on progress with the spacecraft that they hoped they would soon fly. As Luge Luetjen recalls, “During this and subsequent visits, we developed lasting first-name friend­ships and a mutual respect for each other’s role in the ‘great adventure.’ Their sugges­tions and recommendations throughout the program were timely, well thought out, and were of great help in the design, construction, and testing of the machine.”25

On 4 April, Glenn, Grissom and Shepard left for Pennsylvania to undertake refresher tests at the Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville, just outside of Philadelphia. The center had once served as an aircraft production factory but was later converted to U. S. Navy research laboratories that were studying pilotless aircraft, electronics and weapons. It was also home to a vast human centrifuge building, which assisted in researching the limits of a pilot’s tolerance to a rapid buildup of gravitational or g-forces.

Here the future astronauts were strapped into a 10-foot by 6-foot steel gondola situated at the end of a 50-foot arm, and secured in various positions relative to the applied g-force. As well, the gondola could be rotated by controllers while the high – performance centrifuge was in action. At the far working end of the centrifuge’s arm was a 4,000 horsepower electric engine to hurl the gondola and its hapless occupant around the circular chamber at high speed.

John Glenn would later refer to the Johnsville centrifuge as a “dreaded” and “dia­bolical” part of astronaut training. In his book, John Glenn: A Memoir, he said, “Whirling around at the end of that long arm, I was acting as a guinea pig for what a human being might encounter [whilst] being launched into space or reentering the atmosphere. You were straining every muscle of your body to the maximum… if you even thought of easing up, your vision would narrow like a set of blinders, and you’d start to black out.”6

On that occasion Grissom made two simulated Mercury acceleration profiles, which proved to be his last preflight experience on the dreaded centrifuge.

Another particularly vital training aid frequently used by the astronauts was the flight procedures trainer. A complex device, it comprised a mockup version of the Mercury capsule with all of its systems connected to exterior control panels and com­puters. The trainer allowed the astronauts to test their proficiency by flying simulated missions and learning how to control possible contingencies such as emergency situations.

Another valuable training device was the Air-Lubricated Free Attitude (ALFA) trainer at NASA Langley. In using the ALFA, the astronaut first strapped himself into a couch that was then finely balanced on a cushion of compressed air in order to remove any feeling of friction. Then, moving very freely on all three axes, it provided the astronaut with important practice in lightly maintaining their spacecraft at the cor­rect orbital attitude. “This trainer provided the only training in visual control of the spacecraft,” Gus Grissom would later recall.7

When asked how it was communicated to him onboard the Randolph that the MR-4 launch had taken place, Jim Lewis vividly recalled the facts.

“My log book shows that we flew two missions that day,” he stated, “the first being a checkout flight of just over a half hour. As I recall, our plan was to lift off the carrier at the same time the booster lifted off from Cape Canaveral. We were waiting in the cockpit with engines running and received word that the launch occurred via ship-to – aircraft radio. All that remained was to engage rotors and take off once clearance was granted from flight control.

“Once MR-4 had lifted off, we had about fifteen minutes to get there and begin recovery operations, and I believe the carrier was standing about five miles off the impact area. We flew at about ninety knots, so getting into the primary recovery area quickly was no problem.

“I was initially occupied with observing the sky above, searching for the Liberty Bell 7 parachute. Beyond that, I was intent on executing the mission procedures and plan. I finally saw the spacecraft on its chutes. I couldn’t say what altitude, but it wasn’t very high.” 3

With Liberty Bell 7 now heading towards an ocean splashdown, gently swinging and slowly rotating beneath its main parachute, Grissom heard from the crew of the radio relay airplane call-signed Card File 23.

“We are heading directly toward you,” the pilot announced, as he observed the bell­shaped spacecraft floating downwards past 3,000 feet. At this time, Jim Lewis aboard rescue helicopter Hunt Club 1 also established radio communications with Grissom, letting him know that he was positioned about two miles southwest of the projected splashdown site.

As Grissom prepared for splashdown, the protective heat shield at the base of the capsule detached on schedule with an audible “clunk” and dropped about three feet below the spacecraft. This action in the landing sequence also revealed the attached perforated landing bag, which would absorb much of the shock of impact when the spacecraft smacked down on the water. Following splashdown, the bag’s next job was to help stabilize the craft by filling up with seawater. It would then act like a sea anchor, to keep the spacecraft upright until it could be hauled out of the water by the recovery helicopter. Salt water would then drain out through air holes in the skirt of the bag.

In the Mercury Control Center, Flight Director Chris Kraft was wary of proclaim­ing the space flight a success, but as he later wrote he was entirely pleased with the way the MR-4 mission had gone. “Grissom was good,” he observed. “He handled the maneuvers to perfection, using the three systems of automatic, manual, and rate com­mand, a combination of the two.

“His Earth observations were cogent, and his call-outs during reentry were on time and worry-free. Then he splashed down.

“The radio link between the low-flying aircraft, the helicopters, and mission con­trol was touchy. We only heard part of it. Gus was down and safe… Then next we heard excited voices, too garbled to understand clearly.”4

Samuel T. (‘Sam’) Beddingfield was an aeronautical engineer who was involved in testing airplanes for the U. S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB before linking up with NASA at Langley Field, Virginia. At first he wanted to become involved in air­plane testing once again, but the NASA interviewer suggested he might instead find better work with the rocket people, who were in need of experienced engineers. Beddingfield drove around to that area of the field and the first person he bumped into was Gus Grissom, with whom he had tested airplanes at Wright-Patterson, and the recently selected astronaut convinced him to join the rocket team. As he told inter­viewer Lori Walters in 2001. “I was at Langley Field, Virginia two weeks and they told me they needed me to go on a temporary trip. And so they sent me down here to Cape Canaveral to help get Project Mercury started down here and that was very early October 1959 and I’ve been here ever since.”

Beddingfield helped establish NASA’s engineering facilities at the Cape as well as administering the setting-up of Hangar S as a work area and crew quarters for the astronauts. He then became involved as a mechanical engineer in the early Redstone launches of unmanned production Mercury spacecraft, and the 5 May 1961 launch of Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7.

Asked if he had talked over the loss of Liberty Bell 7 with Grissom, Beddingfield said they had discussed it at length. “Yes, I talked to him quite a bit after the flight because a lot of people thought he must have fired the explosive that blew the hatch off. I knew if he had done that he’d tell me. We had tested airplanes enough together in the Air Force that when anything went wrong we knew we had to tell each other about it. And they put me on a team to go interview Gus as to what happened. And he told me he did not fire that hatch.”

Beddingfield stated that during Mercury tests of the explosive hatch, and on the subsequent Mercury manned flights, the blowing of the hatch caused noticeable deep bone bruising on the back of the hand of the astronauts involved. Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton agreed. “No one should have the idea that Gus was going around being defensive about this hatch thing,” Slayton remarked. “But he told me, sure, there was a possibility he had banged the thing by mistake…. All I know is that when Wally Schirra blew the hatch on his [MA-8] flight, he wound up with a big bruise on his hand. Gus never had one.”21

Schirra had ridden inside his Sigma 7 spacecraft as the recovery helicopter lifted it out of the ocean and flew it to the deck of the USS Kearsarge (CV-33). He blew the hatch only when he was ready to exit the capsule. He had to hit the plunger with five or six pounds of fist force; so hard that he injured his hand. He was not slow to show the tell-tale impact bruising and cut on his hand at his medical debriefing.

As Schirra wrote in his autobiography, Schirra’s Space, which was co-written with Richard Billings, “I blew the hatch on purpose, and the recoil of the plunger injured my hand – it actually caused a cut through a glove that was reinforced by metal. Gus was one of those who flew out to the ship and I showed him my hand. ‘How did you cut it?’ he asked. ‘I blew the hatch,’ I replied. Gus smiled, vindicated. It proved he hadn’t blown the hatch with a hand, foot, knee or whatever, for he hadn’t suffered even a minor bruise.”22

Beddingfield concurs. “Gus did not have [a bruise] in his hand. And when we got the spacecraft back we found out that the hatch could have done something that we don’t even understand. But Gus did not fire it. We were fairly comfortable in that.” Sam Beddingfield worked hard trying to determine the cause of the blown hatch. Grissom assisted by participating in extensive tests where he intentionally bumped against the plunger, but failed at all times to blow the hatch. The design engineers tried everything, but could not replicate whatever malfunction had caused the hatch to blow. According to a Project Mercury Status Report for the period ending 31 October 1961:

During a period between August 5, 1961 and October 12, 1961 a series of envi­ronmental tests were conducted on the explosive hatch. Individual pieces of the mild detonation fuse (MDF) cord, detonator caps, and RDX lead cups were subjected to simulated altitudes of 118 miles and 135 miles and subjected to 2,000-volt +1.2 to 2.0 milliampere static discharges. No inadvertent ignition occurred.

The units were then assembled into igniter assemblies and fired by pulling the lanyard. Full-order ignition occurred. Additional MDF cord was subjected to varying exposure in hydrogen peroxide. One condition resulted in a low-order detonation without igniting the full length of 12 inches. Two repeats of the same condition failed to induce any detonation. The MDF was reduced to puddles of lead in all of these tests.

Three inert igniter assemblies were subjected to push tests with the shear pin removed, with and without vacuum, and with and without the ‘O’ ring. The mini­mum push force was 2.63 pounds. The assembly with the minimum push force was subjected to vibrations of 0.03 to 10 G at frequencies from 5 to 2,000 cycles per second with no displacement of the plunger noted. A loaded hatch assembly which was subjected to a saline solution soak, with vacuum, electrostatic shock and vibration was degraded to the point of “no fire” due to salt concentration degrading the detonator caps. This hatch assembly was then disassembled, reloaded and subjected to a simulated launch, three orbits, and reentry tempera­ture test conditions. The pressure altitude during the test was 240,000 feet.

Upon removal from the test chamber, the hatch was subjected to a saline solu­tion soak and repeated electrostatic discharges. No detonation occurred. The hatch was then fired by lanyard pull and normal operation occurred.23

In 1965 Dr. Robert Voas, who was serving as the astronauts’ training officer at the time of MR-4, remained convinced that Grissom did not blow the hatch, either inten­tionally or accidentally. “When John Glenn completed his [MA-6] flight, he egressed from the capsule by actuating the explosive mechanism that exploded off the hatch. When he was later examined a bruise was found on his hand, caused by a pin that jumps back. On the next flight, Scott Carpenter climbed out of the top of the capsule and didn’t use the hatch. Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper both exploded the hatch and both suffered bruises on their hands. Everyone who has actuated that explosive hatch has gained a bruise. The fact that Gus did not have a bruise is final demonstra­tion that he did not inadvertently actuate the mechanism. Although it has never been explained what did cause the accident, he has been completely absolved of the responsibility.”24

Curt Newport’s team set sail on a two-week voyage on Monday, 19 April 1999. This time the Discovery Channel was paying for the entire expedition as well as filming the venture for a documentary to be broadcast in the fall. Everyone was hoping for a suc­cessful conclusion. The ship, the MV Needham Tide, was equipped with the very lat­est in side-scan sonar unit, although in reality the ship was barely suitable for a sonar search because of its propulsion system; it didn’t even have variable pitch propellers. The only way they could operate it sufficiently slowly to tow at 1.5 knots was to put one screw ahead and one astern, which they did for a whole week.

“We have a pretty good idea where to look for it,” Newport said prior to sailing. “To say I’m cautiously optimistic is probably the right term … this is a full-fledged, dedi­cated mission to go out and locate and recover this thing. We have a lot more time, we have a better sonar, we can examine a much larger area of the ocean at one time. Consequently, our chances are better. Outside of Challenger, this is the only one we haven’t gotten back. It’s the right thing to do. It’s patriotic. It was one of ours.”13

Misfortunate quickly set in when the side-scan sonar broke down, but once fixed it identified 88 possible targets scattered across the 24 square mile area that Newport had pinpointed based on 14 years of studying NASA charts and interviewing people who were there when Liberty Bell 7 went down, such as helicopter pilot Jim Lewis.

On Saturday evening, 1 May, on Day 14 of the expedition, something bizarre hap­pened. At 7:20 p. m., on the very first attempt and to everyone’s amazement, a vaguely familiar shape – a veritable ghostly apparition – emerged from the murky terrain as they stared at the video screen. Newport would not allow himself to get carried away; his first reaction was that it might be more large pieces of aircraft wreckage. After all, Target #71 was the very first object the Magellan Rover had closed in on. But as it drew nearer there was no mistaking the bell-shaped object with its rough exterior; it was the Mercury capsule Liberty Bell 7. Everyone, and especially Newport, was stunned at hitting the target first time.

“Everyone said that we simply got lucky. But it was not luck that we were looking in that area. Target 71 was one of a cluster of five hard contacts centered near my wind-corrected GBI FPS-16 radar location. That target was the first we looked at because it made sense from the operational standpoint, that is, from the positioning and navigational standpoints. In reality, the first target we found was a trail of LB7’s decomposed heat shield, which was scattered down a small rise from the capsule. We had no idea what we were looking at. I thought that it was aircraft debris. The next thing I knew, we were seeing this tall thing in the darkness up the hill.”14

From what they could see, the spacecraft appeared to be intact and the words Liberty Bell 7 could be clearly discerned on the side of the craft. And so could the false, painted crack. As Newport later pointed out, the spacecraft could easily have been obscured from the sonar and they might not have seen it in the gloom. Good fortune was certainly riding with them that day since it was a very small object in a massive area of ocean floor. “What we did find was something in water half a mile deeper than the Titanic and it’s smaller than one of the Titanic’s boilers.”15

Sadly, the team’s elation would not last long. At four minutes to midnight the cable to the remotely operated Magellan 725 ROV snapped in the rough seas and the rover

After five hours probing the depths, the Magellan ROV located some mysterious glistening chunks of white material Newport described as “space age bread crumbs” which led the team to Liberty Bell 7. (Discovery Channel image courtesy of Curt Newport)

The first ghostly images of Liberty Bell 7 captured in Magellan’s powerful lights. (Discovery Channel image courtesy of Curt Newport)

was lost, sinking to the sea floor 15,800 feet below the Needham Tide. It meant the team would have to abandon the operation and return to Port Canaveral to replace the rover, which would set them back a few weeks. But now they knew precisely where the capsule was. Despite the loss of an expensive ROV, Newport maintained a sense of optimism in a call he made from the ship. “It looks to be in beautiful condition,” he reported of the spacecraft, “and certainly capable of being recovered.”

The lost ROV would not remain on the ocean floor for long. “The Magellan 725 was later recovered about a week after we returned to the Cape with the capsule. I personally believe that Oceaneering would’ve left it there except for the expensive camera we had leased from WHOI. Woods Hole wanted that camera back, which was the same one we’d used to image the Titanic the previous year. They left the depressor and several thousand feet of armored optical fiber cable on the bottom simply by cut­ting the soft tether and lifting the ROV.”16

It would take Oceaneering International five weeks to construct another ROV, this time named Ocean Discovery. The expedition team sailed again on 4 July on a differ­ent ship, the Ocean Project. They stopped briefly at Fort Lauderdale to pick up a few people, including Jim Lewis, the helicopter pilot who had unsuccessfully attempted to rescue the sinking capsule in 1961, and Guenter Wendt, McDonnell’s former launch pad leader. Two bomb experts from UXB International were also on board to deacti­vate the explosive SOFAR navigation device which had apparently failed to detonate when the spacecraft sank.

Another of the problems that needed to be addressed by Langley’s Flight Research Division – prior even to the formation of the STG – had been the development of a reliable parachute system for a manned space program. Beginning in October 1958 a progressive series of air tests were carried out to assess the deployment, reliability and specifications of a number of different parachute systems.

The first air drops were conducted as a means of studying the free-fall stability of the spacecraft, parachute shock loads, and the operation of the capsule’s escape sys­tem. Initial tests were carried out by the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division at the High Speed Flight Station, Edwards AFB, California, in order to collect data on open­ing characteristics and shock loads associated with the drogue chute. Once this infor­mation had been gathered and collated, the test engineers’ attention turned to the size and performance characteristics of the main parachute. This had to be large enough so that the final impact velocity of the capsule might be kept at about 30 feet per second.

In order to demonstrate the adequacy of the mechanical system in deploying the drogue and main parachutes, preliminary drops were made from NASA helicopters at West Point, Virginia. These utilized concrete-filled drums attached to the operating canister system. Following these tests, a Lockheed C-130A Hercules cargo aircraft was supplied by the Tactical Air Command for the continuation of tests, now involv­ing both high – altitude and low-altitude drops.

Initially, low-level drops were carried out in the vicinity of Pope AFB, near Fort Bragg in North Carolina, to perfect the best means of extracting a full-scale capsule equipped with operating parachute systems from the open tail ramp of the C-130. Once these had been completed, the research and development program moved on to Wallops Island, Virginia, where further drops were carried out under the auspices of Langley’s Flight Research Division. The advanced tests were planned to study the stability of the Mercury capsule both during free flight and with parachute support, shock input into the capsule by the parachute, and retrieval operations. Four drops were completed from altitudes ranging up to 23,000 feet, with parachute openings at up to 15,000 feet. These successful tests demonstrated that with properly designed equipment, there was no impediment to recovery helicopters being utilized in the retrieval operation.

Subsequent air drop tests were completed at various altitudes to investigate the stability of the capsule using a 6-foot FIST (Flugtechnisches Institut Stuttgart) Ribbon drogue parachute in combination with a 67-foot extended skirt main chute. These indicated that a different type of main chute would offer greater reliability. Ring-sail parachutes were substituted, and the drop-test program continued. The results of these tests concluded that a ring-sail parachute would have the desired reliability.

Six succeeding drops using a 6-foot FIST drogue and the 63-foot ring-sail main canopy were all successful. It was decided that this parachute combination worked best and could be used throughout the Mercury program.

As Max Faget explained, “What happened was, the upper part of that capsule held the parachutes. There were two parachutes, the main parachute and the backup, which were identical – completely identical. Even the systems were all identical. They had their own drogue parachutes and pilot parachutes and everything else, but we never had to use the backup system. And there was a hatch up in front, up at the top. If you were sitting in the capsule on the pad – of course, it’s a cone around you like that – right up there would be this hatch, and that was nothing but a dish that was held in place, more or less, by the pressure, although it had a few latches, an inwardly opening door, which made it very light, and, of course, it was dish-shaped, so that it was just about as light as you could make it.

“So when the thing got on the water and [was] floating upright, you could unfasten this dish and push the containers for the parachute, just push them out; they’d fall overboard, and you could get out…. Well, the astronauts did not like the idea of being trapped in this thing, so they complained about it, and we put this explosive bolt device on the side there, which had to be [powered] on and then fired.

“The hatch that they went into was fastened with something like about fifty or sixty small bolts, so it really wasn’t a hatch, it was just a covering. So they were essentially sealed in the capsule.”26

In fact, as revealed in NASA’s configuration specifications to McDonnell for the Mercury capsule, there were actually 70 bolts in the emergency egress hatch:

3.5.3 ENTRANCE AND EMERGENCY EGRESS HATCH – The entrance and emergency egress hatch, in accordance with Drawing No. 45-35003, located in the capsule conical section, shall be trapezoidal in shape as dictated by the cap­sule configuration. The hatch assembly shall be of a construction similar to the basic capsule structure, designed to permit entry into, and emergency egress from, the capsule. An explosive assembly, in accordance with Drawing No. 45-35701, shall be incorporated in the hatch assembly to serve as a means, when ignited, of breaking the seventy (70) hatch attachment bolts. The explosive assembly shall be mounted about the hatch perimeter and shall consist of a gas­ket type sill containing a continuous single strand of explosive charge to effect severance of the attachment bolts. The strand shall be ignited from both ends simultaneously to provide redundancy. A push-button initiator, located on the hatch interior to the astronaut’s upper right, shall, after removal of a safety cap and pin, ignite the explosive charge when pushed by the astronaut. A pull initia­tor assembly shall be provided for ground rescue utilization on the exterior of the hatch beneath the shingles. Function of the pull initiator assembly shall be the same as for the astronaut-actuated initiator. The hatch assembly shall be secured to the capsule structure by two wire springs, in accordance with Drawing No. 45-35058. These springs shall absorb the energy expended by the explosive charge and serve to prevent injury to personnel working in the hatch area during recovery operations.27

EXPLOSIVE CHARGE

HATCH INNER SEAL

CAPSULE HATCH SILL

LIBERTY BELL 7 • (MERCURY 4) HATCH DIAGRAM

Diagram of the MR-4 hatch. (Illustration: NASA)

As the first months of 1961 passed, most of Grissom’s attention was centered on the forthcoming suborbital flight of Alan Shepard for which he was the backup pilot. He stood ready to take over the role of prime pilot in the event that Shepard was unable to fulfill that role. In addition to assisting Shepard throughout the preparations for the flight, Grissom worked with him through the various delays that plagued the MR-3 launch.

On 5 May 1961 it all came together for NASA when Shepard became the first American to be launched into space on a suborbital trajectory, thereby confirming – albeit briefly – that a human being could not only survive the dynamics of launch and reentry, but work without any physiological hindrance in weightlessness. His Freedom 7 capsule came through the 15-minute flight with flying colors, and the Redstone booster performed with its renowned reliability.

“We all pulled together on that one,” Grissom later wrote, “just as we do on all our flights, and I stuck pretty close to Al until he went up. I was with him when he dressed, and I rode out in the van with him to the pad. After that flight I buckled down to my own problems and stayed near my own capsule as much as I could.”8

Approximately 60 days prior to the MR-4 mission, with the launch tentatively set for mid-July, Grissom began specific preparation for the flight, and his experiences during this lengthy buildup period would eventually shape the pattern of his actions and responses during the flight. During this period he mostly stayed at the nearby Holiday Inn in Cocoa Beach so as to closely follow the preparation of the capsule and booster at the Cape, flying home briefly each weekend to visit Betty and their two boys. He participated in countless systems checks carried out in the Hangar S test

Both in dress uniform, Grissom stands alongside America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard. (Photo: NASA)

Clockwise from top-left, this sequence shows the astronauts’ procedure for firing the explo­sive hatch. The first photo shows the knurled knob that had to be turned and removed (as seen in the second image) to reveal the plunger. And once the pin had been removed, the plunger was ready to be depressed with a solid push. (Photos: McDonnell Douglas)

facility, and most of his waking hours were spent going over every component again and again with McDonnell and NASA engineers and scientists assigned to the test.

“It’s good for them to know that the guy who is going to ride it is around,” Grissom commented of this period, echoing his earlier philosophy on working alongside the McDonnell people while Spacecraft No. 11 was being assembled in St. Louis.9 He also took up jogging along the beach in order to keep himself in good physical trim and mentally run through any mission-related issues. As a precaution against sustain­ing any disqualifying injuries, he temporarily gave up his favorite sport of water-ski­ing, and moderated his driving speed to stay with lawful limits.

At 7:36 a. m., just 15 minutes 37 seconds after lifting off from Cape Canaveral, America’s second manned space flight came to an abrupt end as Liberty Bell 7 plunged into the Atlantic at 28 feet per second. Gus Grissom recalls being a little surprised that the only sensation he felt on splashdown was a mild jolt, which he later equated to impact with the ground after a parachute jump, and “not hard enough to cause discom­fort or disorientation.”5

As expected, the spacecraft heeled over in the choppy seas, and moments later the window was completely underwater. For a few seconds Grissom imagined he was upside-down, but the spacecraft soon began to right itself in the water. He did hear what he later described as a “disconcerting gurgling noise” as Liberty Bell 7 slowly rolled upright and the recovery section on top of the capsule drew clear of the water. A quick check reassured him that no seawater was entering the spacecraft. His next action was to jettison the reserve parachute by clicking a recovery aids switch. He heard the chute jettison and through his periscope could see the canister drifting away in the choppy water. He reported that he was in good shape whilst switching on a radio beacon and other rescue aids and deploying a sea marker which spread a bright green dye. He then began to complete his final checks, as he later reported in his post-flight debriefing.

“I felt that I was in good condition at this point and started to prepare myself for egress. I had previously opened the faceplate and had disconnected the visor seal while descending on the main parachute. The next moves, in order, were to disconnect the oxygen outlet hose at the helmet, unfasten the helmet from the suit, release the chest strap, release the lap belt and shoulder harness, release the knee straps, discon­nect the biomedical sensors, and roll up the neck dam. The neck dam is a rubber dia­phragm that is fastened on the exterior of the suit, below the helmet-attaching ring. After the helmet is disconnected, the neck dam is rolled around the ring and up around the neck, similar to a turtleneck sweater. This left me connected to the spacecraft at two points – the oxygen inlet hose which I needed for cooling, and the helmet com­munications lead.”6

Next, Grissom radioed the waiting helicopter pilot Jim Lewis. “Okay, Hunt Club, give me how much longer it’ll be before you get here.”

“This is Hunt Club,” Lewis responded. “We are in orbit now at this time around the capsule.”

“Roger,” Grissom radioed back. “Give me about another five minutes to [record] these switch positions here, before I give you a call to come in and hook on. Are you ready to come in and hook on any time?”

Aboard Hunt Club 1 Lewis was prepared for the operation. “Roger. We’re ready any time you are.”

“Okay; give me about another three or four minutes here to take these switch posi­tions, then I’ll be ready for you.”7

According to plan, Grissom then noted down all the switch positions using a grease pencil. “All switches were left just the way they were at impact, with the exception of the rescue aids, and I recorded these by marking them down on the switch chart… and then put it back in the map case.”8

Recording the positions with a grease pen while wearing pressure suit gloves proved difficult, but he completed the task. The suit ventilation was continually caus­ing his neck dam to swell, which he alleviated from time to time by jamming a gloved finger between his neck and the dam to allow a buildup of air to escape.

Once his shut-down duties and checks had been completed, Grissom turned his attention to oft-rehearsed preparations to blow the hatch. “I took the pins off both the top and bottom of the hatch to make sure the wires wouldn’t be in the way, and then took the cover off the detonator and put it down toward my feet.” He had earlier removed the hand-forged Randall survival knife from its sheath in the door and placed it in his survival pack as he called in the rescue helicopters. He admits that a short while later, as he lay back in his couch waiting for the helicopter to arrive overhead, he contemplated retrieving the knife from his survival pack and keeping it as a souve­nir of the flight. Specially made for NASA, only nine were produced: one for each of the astronauts, and two spares. They were one of the strongest knives ever made, fashioned from high-grade Swedish steel, which Gordon Cooper once described as “so sturdy that it can be used like a chisel to cut through steel bolts. You could prob­ably slice your way right through the capsule wall with it if you had to.”9

Grissom was satisfied that he had completed all of his pre-egress tasks. Once the prime helicopter had hooked up to Liberty Bell 7 and raised the hatch clear of the water the pilot would confirm that all was in readiness. All Grissom had to do then was punch the detonator plunger with a five-pound blow and the hatch would explode outwards from the spacecraft, allowing him to slide out onto the door sill and wait for the rescue sling to be lowered. It was then just a matter of being winched up into the helicopter. Following this, he and the capsule would be transported together to the waiting carrier, emulating the successful retrieval of Alan Shepard and Freedom 7 some ten weeks earlier.

Meanwhile, Jim Lewis had responded to Grissom’s transmission, advising the astronaut that the rescue sling would be ready for him outside the capsule once the hatch was explosively jettisoned. Each of the Marine rescue helicopters carried a two – man crew; on Hunt Club 1 Lewis and his co-pilot Lt. John Reinhard were working well together as a team. Despite the noise within his cockpit, Lewis later reported communications with the spacecraft were “normal and excellent, as the system was designed for that acoustic environment, so all was nominal. All our voices were calm. We’d rehearsed these procedures and activities [in Chesapeake Bay] off Langley AFB with the astronauts, and there was no reason not to be calm. That’s what good training does. In addition, Gus had a low resonant voice, which was pleasant to hear. It was all very calm and professional. There were Navy aircraft in the area available to provide communication relays in case they were needed and to extend the search area if needed. As I recall, there were Russian trawlers in the general area, but not the actual recovery zone.”10

In the late 1990s, space historian Rick Boos conducted an extensive interview with Jim Lewis’s co-pilot John Reinhard. On being asked how far their helicopter Hunt Club 1 was from Liberty Bell 7 when the hatch suddenly blew out into the water, Reinhard responded, “We were actually about five feet away and maybe not even that far. We were hovering, just sitting there waiting in a hover, that’s all. Whether [Jim] considered ‘final’ as sliding over to [the capsule] I don’t know. Had we been further away we wouldn’t [have made the attempt], we would just have lost it and started the harness down and picked [Gus] up.”

As to Reinhard’s own version of what happened, he told Boos, “There was very little happening on final approach. We were in a hover, waiting on Gus to complete what he had to do inside the cockpit. We were ready anyway. I had what you call a ‘cookie cutter’ all ready to go, which was the antenna snipper. Gus said he was ready and we slid over, and when I touched the antenna there was an [electrostatic] arc. The cookie cutter had two blades on it with two explosive squibs and both of them had gone off without my activating them, and they were on two separate switches! So whatever it was that caused the arc set them both off; and fortunately the antenna was inside the yoke on it and snipped it and cut it off. At the same time that’s when I was aware that Gus was coming out.”

Asked if he actually saw the hatch go, Reinhard replied, “I just saw a flash and Gus came out. [The hatch] went out to the end of the lanyard and kept going. It was right after I cut the antenna.” He also told Boos that Capt. Phil Upschulte (who died in April 2012) and Lt. George Cox saw it all happening from Hunt Club 2.

The next question was an obvious one. “So it was when you cut the antenna that the hatch blew?”

Reinhard answered without hesitation, “Right! When I touched the antenna there was an arc and both cutters fired. At that same time, the hatch came off. It could be that some static charge set it off.”25

There is a noteworthy precedent to Reinhard’s story, as told by Peter Armitage, an AVRO engineer working with NASA’s Space Task Group and project manager for the Mercury capsule air drop tests. Armitage was tasked with finding a safe and manage­able means of recovering Mercury space capsules from the water. As doing so from a

Navy destroyer in generally rolling or choppy seas could be an extremely difficult task, helicopter recovery became the preferred option. But there was one obstacle to overcome, namely the telescoping HF antenna that extended out 22 feet above the spacecraft as a radio recovery aid.

“It started out, aluminum of about an inch or so [in diameter] and ended up just a thin antenna at the top. But when we flew in with a helicopter, [the antenna] was so high up that you couldn’t get close enough because it might hit the rotor blades. And the helicopter guy had to come in with what amounts to a shepherd’s crook and hook onto the spacecraft and then get the big hook in and pull it all out.

“Milt Windler and I started thinking about that problem, and we got some money out of petty cash… went down to the hardware store in Hampton and we bought two things. We bought a tree pronged pruner. They’re saws on the end of a pole. And we bought just a pole tree pruner, the little thing that lops off limbs. I still have it. It’s at home. I use it still.

“We did a few tests to see if we could cut through [the antenna]. Well, of course, the dynamics were terrible, because the helicopter was doing this and the spacecraft [was] waving around. It was really difficult. So Bob [Thompson] said one day,

‘Why don’t you go up to the naval ordnance place at Dahlgren, Virginia.’ It was just north of Hampton… So I took off one day on my own, talked to the people to see if they could put an explosive charge in this tree pruner so that once you got onto it, instead of having to pull a rope, which took too much time, that you’d press a button and the antenna would [be sliced off]. They took that project and what they produced was a great thing, and then we tested that and it worked fine. The helicopter would first fly in to the antenna, put this thing [against it], press a button, lop off the antenna, and then they could go in and pick [the capsule] up.

“Interesting story there. We had sent this [cutter] to the New River Marine Base, the big Marine base [in North Carolina] where all the helicopter support came from. We sent it down there and they had played around with it. They had put a Mercury boiler­plate out with the antenna, not in the water initially but just on the land, then flown in, cut the antenna off, picked it up.

“We were using HR-2S twin-engine helicopters, big helicopters, single-blade, twin-engine. You could reach out of the front of it. In fact, we designed and built a catamaran that was nothing more than a structure with rails that stuck right out of the front of the [helicopter], with a little basket on it, something like you see guys going up telephone poles with. And here you’ve got this big helicopter behind you. So we had produced this, and they’d done some tests. I went down to witness a test of this new system we designed… They said, ‘Would you like to do it?’ and I said ‘Fine.’

“So here I am, strapped on the end of this flimsy-looking thing with this gigantic helicopter behind me, and they gave me the electronic tree-pruning device in my hands, and they flew around the field and flew in to the boilerplate spacecraft with the antenna. As soon as I touched the thing to the antenna, my hands went up like that. There’s a big static shock [produced by the spinning rotor]. I looked behind and there’s all these Marines laughing their heads off. Of course, you needed big gloves. They were just having fun, you know. But just terrible.”26

On the evening of Wednesday, 20 July 1999, Liberty Bell 7 was finally recovered from the depths of the Atlantic, just one day short of the 38th anniversary of Gus Grissom’s suborbital MR-4 mission, and 30 years to the day that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had walked on the Moon.

It took eight hours to bring the spacecraft to the surface. “I actually designed the recovery tools used to create a new lift point on the capsule as the old Dacron loop was judged not suitable,” Newport explained. “This was done while I was working at Oceaneering Space Systems and the dimensions were checked using the MA-1 wreck­age that Max [Ary] had at the Cosmosphere (in 1993). After finding the capsule and before the second trip, I took one of the tools to NASM’s Garber facility and estab­lished where we could and could not attach them on the escape tower mounting ring. You just couldn’t place them anywhere, as fasteners and sensors interfered in certain areas. I used the images I took while the tools were being installed during the recovery to make sure they were being put where they should be. Oceaneering had earlier mis­placed three of the four tools but I had one of them in my bedroom closet for years, always hoping that I’d get a chance to use it.”17

Lifting Liberty Bell 7 was a delicate operation. The water-filled craft weighed 3,000 pounds as it was slowly raised to the surface, so even using a super-strong Kevlar line everyone proceeded with the utmost of caution. To the former Hunt Club 1 helicopter pilot Jim Lewis’s amazement, when Liberty Bell 7 finally broke to the surface he saw that the recovery line which his co-pilot John Reinhard had attached in 1961 was still dangling from the top of the capsule. As he commented later, “To see it come out of the water again, like it did that long ago, was a feeling that I don’t have an adjective to apply to.” 18

Once the spacecraft had been successfully raised and anchored onto the deck of the ship, the two bomb experts carefully rummaged around the capsule’s interior and removed the explosive SOFAR device, which they threw overboard.

Considering the time that the capsule had spent in the murky depths, it was in sur­prisingly good condition as Newport noted, although the beryllium heat shield had totally disintegrated. “I can still see the actual straps that Grissom wore during his flight,” he reported during a phone call from the ship. “The personal parachute inside the spacecraft is perfectly intact.” But things made of aluminum, such as the control panels, had deteriorated badly.19

Newport would later write: “While Liberty Bell 7’s condition was indeed remark­able, the interior was a mess. The forward hatch had come loose from its mount and was lodged in the explosive hatch opening. I gingerly extracted it from the capsule and finally had my first look at the interior. Water continued to drip all through the inside as I stuck my head in, seeing that part of the once intact control panel had disinte­grated, leaving numerous flight instruments dangling like apples on a tree. But what struck me most was the smell… It was like the odor of carbon or decayed wood, prob­ably from the chemical action of the electrolyte in the craft’s batteries. The optical periscope had broken in half and was now laying amongst other rubble such as the decomposed remains of the control panel and what was left of the astronaut camera. I could see part of one of the film spools lying exposed, which eliminated any hope of saving the film.”20

When asked if they had also managed to locate the spacecraft’s hatch, Newport responded that due to a two-day delay caused by problems with the navigational data they had no time to search for the hatch, and the important thing now was to get the spacecraft to port as soon as possible. Once there the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center people would transport Liberty Bell 7 to Hutchinson, Kansas, where their experts would disassemble and clean the capsule.

It was thought possible that the lingering mystery of why the hatch blew might have been recorded in the cockpit film camera that was running as Liberty Bell 7 splashed down, but as Newport had discovered the camera had broken open and the film was completely ruined. “I don’t think there’s going to be any way to answer that question, ever,” Newport said at the time. He added that he had no intentions of going back to look for the hatch, ever. “Finding the spacecraft was good enough.”21

Time would change Newport’s opinion on recovering the hatch. “Well, they say never say never, and I don’t remember exactly what I said regarding the hatch.

But I now think it can be found and is worth recovering. It was always in the plan to look for the hatch and I already had three targets worth investigating. At this point, I’m looking for money and equipment to go back to the site.”22