Category Liberty Bell 7

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

Stated simply, in its final configuration the bell-shaped Mercury capsule was comprised of a conical pressure section topped by the cylindrical recovery system section. The beryllium heat shield was located at the base of the cone and a retro-rocket housing was held to the shield by three metallic straps.

The three retro-rockets, enclosed in a housing in the center of the heat shield, pro­vided the reverse propulsion required to slow the orbiting spacecraft by about 500 feet per second and thereby initiate the deorbit process. The expended retro-rocket pack­age would then be jettisoned.

Attached to the top of the spacecraft by explosive bolts was the escape system, made up of an escape rocket on a 14-foot tubular tower. The escape system was designed such that the Mercury capsule, in an abort contingency, was explosively disengaged from the booster as the escape rocket fired simultaneously. The rocket would pull the capsule upward and to the side as it separated at a rate exceeding 200 feet per second. Once the capsule/escape tower combination had slowed down, the tower would be jettisoned and a normal parachute sequence initiated.

The spacecraft’s instrument panel was set approximately 24 inches in front of the astro­naut. The environmental control system provided conditions for the astronaut similar to that of a military aircraft and had redundant controls, plus another one for emergencies.

The recovery system included the 6-foot FIST drogue parachute which opened at around 21,000 feet and the 63-foot ring-sail main parachute that would be deployed at about 10,000 feet, plus the reserve drogue and main chute. As tests indicated, the planned landing velocity in the water was somewhere in the optimum vicinity of 30 feet per second.

From 14-17 May, Grissom participated in Systems Engineering Department Report (SEDR) 83, a capsule pressure chamber test. This was the only chance for Grissom to familiarize himself with the operation of the environmental control system under sim­ulated flight conditions. It also provided an opportunity for physicists to gather base­line metabolic data on him. And over the following three days, 18-20 May, he participated in SEDR 61, the communications systems check that permitted him to check out all of his communications equipment.

Next, from 1-3 June, Grissom took part in SEDR 73, the capsule’s manual reaction control systems tests. This gave him the opportunity to manipulate the control stick and become familiar with the overall ‘feel’ of the control system. As his training intensified, Grissom also ran a total of 12 simulated missions on the procedures trainer from 17-23 June, followed by 24 simulated missions on the ALFA trainer on 28 June.10

While all of this advanced training was taking place at the Cape, there were also daily scheduling meetings to attend. These sessions kept everyone apprised of the flight’s progress and any problems that had cropped up. As Grissom reflected in We Seven, this was where they reviewed any work being done on the various systems.

“It was also here that the perfectionists in the crowd would sometimes try to stop the show and redesign the whole system again from scratch. I wanted a safe and effi­cient capsule as much as anyone, and I did not blame the engineers, who were proud of their work, for trying to make each part they were working on absolutely perfect. I knew that if something happened to me which could be traced to one of their deci­sions, it would hang heavy on them. But I had also noticed, during my days as a test pilot, that engineers are seldom satisfied to have something work well. They often want to go on testing and testing a system until it is almost worn out. I felt, therefore, that it was up to me to stay on top of the situation and make sure that we got a space­craft at all, and then try to reassure the engineers that if it satisfied the pilot who had to fly it, it ought to satisfy them. In order to convince them of my case, of course, I had to know the spacecraft myself, inside out.”11

The assigned Redstone rocket was slated for delivery to the Cape on 22 June, but as that date neared it became obvious that this particular booster would not be ready in time, so another was substituted. This arrived on a cargo aircraft from Huntsville on

the scheduled date. Grissom, in his usual meticulous way, wanted to be part of this. When he got to Patrick AFB at Cape Canaveral the crew had already unloaded the Redstone and placed it on a trailer for the slow ride to the launch pad 15 miles away. “I joined the caravan, and when we reached the pad I got out and walked alongside the Redstone as it pulled in. I guess I looked a little eager, for Paul Donnelly, the capsule test conductor, spoke up.

“‘Don’t worry, Gus,’ he said, ‘they’re not going to shoot it without you.’”12

Recovery procedures now meant that Lewis and his co-pilot Reinhard had the task of cropping off most of the spacecraft’s 4.2-meter HF whip antenna so that it would not interfere with the helicopter’s main rotor when the craft came down to hook onto the lifting loop in the recovery section of the capsule. The telescopic antenna had been automatically deployed when the spacecraft landed, and was there to provide long – range communications and emit a signal for a contingency recovery in the event of the capsule coming down well away from the planned splashdown zone.

As Grissom had landed in the planned pickup zone the antenna was no longer needed, and the procedure was to cut most of it off before the helicopter moved in. This was accomplished using shears similar a tree pruner, attached to the end of a long pole. The co-pilot’s job was to reach down and sever the antenna using this imple­ment. Once he had hooked onto a strong Dacron loop located at the top of Liberty Bell 7, the pilot would apply sufficient engine power to hoist the capsule around 18 inches until the base of the hatch was clear of the water. Finally, they would lower the rescue sling to a position just above the spacecraft and relay this information to Grissom. The astronaut would then disconnect his helmet (thereby ending communications), power down the spacecraft, blow the hatch, and wait for the rescue collar to appear. He would then carefully egress through the hatch and insert his arms into the loop at the foot of the sling. Apart from the use of an explosive hatch, this was the same procedure that had worked so well for Shepard.

As he awaited further instructions, Grissom suddenly heard a dull thud. Without warning, the spacecraft hatch was gone – blown off and out into the ocean. “There wasn’t any doubt in my mind as to what had happened,” he would report in his later debriefing.11 Grissom looked up in shocked disbelief, not only seeing blue sky, but the unnerving sight of salt water spilling over the bottom of the door sill and into the spacecraft.

Grissom knew from previous experiments that once water reached the lower edge of the hatch opening, a Mercury spacecraft could sink in just ten seconds. “I made just two moves,” he later remarked, “both of them instinctive. I tossed off my helmet and then grabbed the right edge of the instrument panel and hoisted myself right out through the hatch.”12 Moments later he was in the water and being thrust away from Liberty Bell 7 by the fierce rotor wash of the helicopter amid a tumult of noise and a rolling Atlantic swell.

In shock, Grissom tried to swim backwards away from his spacecraft, watching with mounting horror as seawater continued to pour in through the open hatch. Co-pilot John Reinhard was equally surprised as Grissom “swam out of the capsule and swam away.”13

Grissom then discovered he had become tangled in a dye-marker line that was wrapped around his shoulder. The line was attached to the spacecraft and he knew that if he could not free himself there was the very likely prospect of being dragged down with the spacecraft if it sank. He finally managed to disentangle himself and moved away from the line.

Somewhat comforted by the fact that he was floating well above the water line and treading water in his buoyant space suit, Grissom was more concerned with the pilot’s efforts to hook onto Liberty Bell 7, which was rapidly settling into the water. “As I got out, I saw the chopper was having trouble hooking onto the capsule. He was franti­cally fishing for the recovery loop. The recovery compartment was just out of the water at this time and I swam over to help him get his hook through the loop.”

By this time the helicopter was directly over the spacecraft, but with all three of its wheels dangerously in the water. “I thought the co-pilot was having difficulty in hook­ing onto the spacecraft and I swam the four or five feet to give him some help,” Grissom later stated. “Actually, he had cut the antenna and hooked the spacecraft in record time.” 14

Those who ever doubted the bravery and tenacity of Gus Grissom have obviously not viewed the film footage of what happened next. Battered by the ferocious force of rotor wash and whipped-up water, his immediate concern was not for himself but for his spacecraft. He was not sure whether the helicopter was fully hooked onto the

As Hunt Club 1 hovers dangerously low overhead, accompanied by a Navy support helicop­ter, Grissom checks to see that they have a solid hook onto the spacecraft’s recovery loop, which is just above the water. An enhanced view of Grissom from the same photograph shows his courageous efforts to ensure the retrieval of Liberty Bell 7. Note his helmet floating in the sea at top left. (Photos: NASA)

spacecraft’s Dacron recovery loop, which was perilously close to being submerged. He actually reached out and checked this, and then pushed back from the spacecraft, giving John Reinhard a quick double thumbs-up to indicate that they were properly hooked up. At this time, only a few inches of the very top of the spacecraft could be seen above the water. It was an incredible act of sheer bravery and guts which could so easily have cost him his life, and demonstrated that despite the circumstances, Gus Grissom was not lacking in a test pilot’s greatest attributes – his coolness and courage under extreme peril.

As he watched, all the time being forced away from the scene by the downdraft, Grissom knew that things were not going well. “The helicopter pulled up and away from me with the spacecraft and I saw the personal sling start down: then the sling was pulled back into the helicopter and it started to move away from me.”15

Expecting as a result of previous recovery training that the astronaut should stay comfortably afloat in his space suit, and therefore was not in any immediate danger, Jim Lewis concentrated on saving the spacecraft from sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Meanwhile, Grissom suddenly realized that he too was sinking ever deeper in the water which, fortunately, was not all that cold. The neck dam was working well, so that was not the problem. It had been designed and tested by fellow astronaut Wally Schirra specifically to prevent water entering a floating astronaut’s space suit, and it probably saved Grissom’s life that day. But he realized that in his haste to evacuate from Liberty Bell 7 he had neglected to lock the midsection oxygen inlet port on his space suit. This was allowing the air in his suit to bleed out and seawater to seep in. With every second that passed he was becoming increasingly heavier and sinking ever lower in the churned-up seawater. He reached down and locked the suit inlet connec­tion to prevent further water penetration.

Now struggling hard to stay afloat, Grissom also recalled some souvenir items he had stuffed into the left leg of his suit. These comprised of two rolls of fifty dimes, some miniature models of his spacecraft, and a small wad of dollar bills. “They were added weight I could have done without,” he later confessed, even though the weight was actually quite minimal.

Despite the loss of Liberty Bell 7, the MR-4 mission was considered to have been a success. Eventually, rather than delay the Mercury program, a fully mechanical hatch was designed to replace the explosive version, but it was deemed to be cumbersome to operate and far too heavy, exceeding set weight constraints. The explosive hatch would remain. What did change was the implementation of a new set of splashdown procedures. These required the astronaut to leave the removable firing safety pin in place until after the helicopter’s recovery cable had been hooked up.

The Mercury program ended after four more flights – all orbital missions – with none of the astronauts opting to blow the hatch at sea and travel to the waiting carrier aboard the recovery helicopter. John Glenn (Friendship 7), Wally Schirra (Sigma 7) and Gordon Cooper (Faith 7) all elected to remain in their capsule until it had been safely secured onboard ship, following which they would blow the hatch. The only exception was Scott Carpenter, whose MA-7 overshot the planned landing zone by 250 nautical miles, which meant it would be a considerable time before he and his spacecraft could be retrieved from the sea. Rather than remain in the unstable craft with the near-certainty of becoming seasick, or blow the side hatch and risk having Aurora 7 fill with seawater and sink, he squeezed up and out through the alternative recovery compartment exit at the top of the spacecraft.

The fact that his spacecraft had been lost at sea remained a source of irritation and torment for Gus Grissom.

“We had worked so hard and had overcome so much to get Liberty Bell launched that it just seemed tragic that a glitch robbed us of the capsule and its instruments at the very last minute. It was especially hard for me, as a professional pilot. In all my years of flying – including combat in Korea – this was the first time that my aircraft and I had not come back together. In my entire career as a pilot, Liberty Bell was the first thing I had ever lost. We tried for weeks afterwards to find out what happened, and how it happened. I even crawled into capsules and tried to duplicate all of my movements in order to see if I could make it happen again. But it was impossible. The plunger that detonates the bolts is so far out of the way that I would’ve had to reach for it on purpose to hit it – and this I did not do. Even when I thrashed about with my elbows, I couldn’t bump against it accidentally. It remained a mystery how that hatch blew. And I am afraid it always will. It was just one of those things.”27

ON TO GEMINI

As of 15 July 1962, Grissom was promoted to the rank of major. Four days later he proudly received the Gen. Thomas D. White Trophy as the “Air Force member who has made the most outstanding contribution to the nation’s progress in aerospace.” Also in 1962, NASA finally moved its manned space flight operations from Langley to the newly built Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. The Grissoms were now able to build their first real home, a three-bedroom house in the Timber Cove development near Seabrook.

Following his MR-4 flight, Grissom acted as CapCom for later Mercury flights, but spent a lot of his time in St. Louis assisting McDonnell in the development and con­struction of the Gemini spacecraft. In October 1962 Deke Slayton also assigned Grissom to supervise the nine Group 2 astronauts in the lead-up to Project Gemini. A practical man, Grissom had understood early on that a second Mercury mission was not on the cards for him, as the remaining astronauts would each be assigned flights that would complete the program. “By then Gemini was in the works,” he wrote in his memoir, “and I realized that if I were going to fly in space again, this was my oppor­tunity, so I sort of drifted unobtrusively into taking more and more part in Gemini.”28

Grissom then turned his efforts to the Gemini spacecraft and specifically the layout of the cockpit controls and instrumentation. He was instrumental in having everything laid out as a pilot would like; so much so that the spacecraft soon became known as the

“Gusmobile.” However, later in the program taller astronauts such as Ed White and Tom Stafford complained that although the arrangement might have been ideal for Grissom’s compact five-foot seven-inch frame, it was something of a tight squeeze for them.

As recalled by Betty Grissom, “Gus was living with the Gemini spacecraft, putting the flier’s touch on the vehicle in which men might live and maneuver in space for days or weeks. At the McDonnell plant in St. Louis he sat in the mockup for hours, day after day, testing each switch and control knob, applying the aviator’s instinct which would guide engineers and technicians in making the machine more flyable and habitable. Although his advice usually was quiet and brief, the engineers never doubted that he meant business, and never forgot that the inanimate mass of metal, wiring and black boxes was a flying machine to carry men from Earth and back again. In fact, they were laying bets that Gus would be the first to fly it.”29

Then, in April 1964 Grissom’s diligent work was rewarded when he received his second mission assignment as commander of the first Gemini two-man mission. The official announcement came on 13 April, five days after the successful launch of the unmanned Gemini 1 capsule. He was the first astronaut to be officially assigned to a second space flight.

Wally Schirra, selected as the Gemini-Titan 3 (GT-3) backup commander along with co-pilot Stafford, was delighted that his Mercury colleague and friend had been given the first flight assignment, saying that he felt Grissom now had something to prove. “He was angry about being blamed for his spacecraft having sunk, and he was fighting to come back out of the pack. Gus was a tiger. He wanted the first Gemini flight, and by God he got it.”30

Following the spacecraft recovery, Newport and the Kansas Cosmosphere’s Max Ary began their documentation and post-recovery work. After taking photographs, Newport used a bilge pump to remove pooled water from the bottom of the capsule while Ary reached through the hatch to see what he could find. To their amazement he felt something unusual and upon withdrawing his hand from the muck revealed sev­eral shiny Mercury dimes.

To prevent further degradation and corrosion following the capsule’s exposure to the air, Liberty Bell 7 was placed into a specially designed container filled with sea water for shipment to the mainland – to a place not far from where it had ascended into the sky atop a Redstone rocket 38 years before. “Putting that capsule into the con­tainer at night, and at sea, was a harrowing experience. We had it in a cargo net and against my explicit instructions the crane operator slewed the capsule around over the sea off the port side with the ship rolling like crazy. I literally put my body between the capsule and the ship’s side to keep them from colliding and Liberty Bell 7 was dunked several times in the water to stabilize things. But we got it done and no one lost any fingers while installing the heavy container top.”23

As the Ocean Project neared Port Canaveral, Curt Newport called the recovery crew together and thanked them for their involvement in the incredibly successful mission – the deepest commercial salvage operation in history.

“I popped the cork on a magnum bottle of Moёt champagne and we celebrated as much as our one bottle allowed.”24