Category Liberty Bell 7

After much deliberation and testing, a decision had been reached on the style and com­position of the capsule’s heat shield. For the initial suborbital flights, it had been decided to adopt a proven system known as a ‘heat sink,’ which had been developed for the bal­listic missile program. Previous testing had revealed that although the intense shock wave generated by a missile cone’s trajectory through the atmosphere managed to keep the massively high temperatures away from the forward-facing blunt end of the cone, enough heat – estimated at a temperature of around 3,000°F – could potentially soak through to melt or even vaporize in an explosive release of gases any normal metal, greatly endangering the life of an astronaut. However, beryllium, with its unusual ability to absorb extremely large quantities of heat, was the obvious candidate to test as the heat sink for a manned capsule.

On Monday, 8 June 1959, after details had been kept secret to that time, it was announced that the Brush Beryllium Company, which operated a plant near Elmore, Ohio, had been assigned the task of producing six gently curved heat shields to protect astronauts from the tremendous frictional heat encountered when their spacecraft reentered the atmosphere.

Beryllium is a hard, light metal that has a high melting point and it was used due to its ability to absorb heat as well as its high conductivity, preventing disastrous build­ups of concentrated surface temperatures. Specifications called for the heat shield to be constructed of “hot-pressed” beryllium, with a diameter of 80 inches and a radius of curvature of 120 inches. It would prove to be the largest single piece of beryllium ever forged to that time.17

In July 1959 Brush Beryllium and the Aluminum Company of America announced the successful production of the first giant, dish-shaped beryllium piece, forged by Alcoa from a record-size billet supplied by Brush.

To produce the heat-sink shield, Brush first hot-pressed a beryllium billet 62 inches in diameter, one of the largest ever made to that time using powder-metallurgy techniques. This was achieved using the company’s patented QMV (quantum mechan­ical vacuum) process, involving simultaneous applications of vacuum, heat and pressure to beryllium powder. Following preliminary machining by Brush, the billet was encased in steel for the high-temperature forging operation. It was then deliv­ered to the Alcoa factory in Cleveland, where it was heated to approximately 2000°F in a specially designed furnace. A huge manipulator then removed the glowing,

steel-jacketed beryllium piece and placed it onto a pre-heated die. The mighty force of a 50,000-ton press, operated by Alcoa under the U. S. Air Force’s Heavy Press Program, squeezed the beryllium billet into a saucer-shaped disc 80 inches across and three inches thick.

Under the contract, Brush Beryllium then forged the final dimensions in their preci­sion machine shop in Cleveland. The last operation in the manufacturing process – ultrasonic inspection – was carried out by Alcoa. Following this, the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation received the finished piece, 72 inches in diameter, ready to be installed as a heat sink of one of the Mercury spacecraft.18

While a beryllium heat shield would be used on capsules in the early booster test flights and the two suborbital missions of Shepard and Grissom, for orbital missions a new, ablative heat shield weighing far less was developed for the Mercury-Atlas flights that would follow.

Grissom was pleased with the overall success of the MA-2 flight, but his mother was somewhat less thrilled when the news broke that he had been selected as one of three candidates to make America’s first flight into space. “Oh no,” she told reporters. “I’ve been hoping and praying he wouldn’t be the one. I hate to be against him because I know he wants to go.” After a pause, she added, “I’ve thought all along he would be one of them. And I’ll be more than proud if everything turns out alright.”1

For his part, Grissom had been brimful of confidence that he might get the first flight, but that lofty ambition had been abruptly thwarted during a private meeting between the astronauts and their boss, Robert Gilruth, on 19 January during which Gilruth had unceremoniously told the seven astronauts that after much deliberation

Shepard had been chosen to make the first suborbital flight and Grissom the second, with Glenn backing up both flights. They were asked to keep the news to themselves until the time of the actual first mission, a chore that was often difficult. As Grissom stoically told one newsman when asked if he would like to be the one chosen to make the first flight, “Everything I do is influenced by it. With everything I do, I expect it. I am here to ride the capsule.”2

Spacecraft No. 11, which would fly the MR-4 mission, was delivered from the McDonnell plant on 7 March. Grissom had viewed the capsule under assembly at the St. Louis plant two months earlier and attended several production meetings there as the months rolled by prior to the capsule being delivered to the Cape. “I thought it would be good for the engineers and workmen who were building my spacecraft to see the pilot who would have to fly it hanging around,” he observed in the astronaut book, We Seven. “It might make them just a little more careful than they already were and a little more eager to get the work done on time if they saw how much I cared.”3

Following NASA’s announcement, speculation on which of the three astronauts would fly the first mission was rife in the press. On 12 March that year, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine editor Marvin Miles published an article under the title “Marine Stands Out as Astronaut Choice.” The article began by explaining its rather emphatic title, suggesting, “We say this because Glenn, at 39 the eldest of the group, has always been the father of the seven-man team; a leader without appointment; an officer particularly respected among the astronauts – and apparently all others in the Mercury program – for his personality, his dedication, his skill and his experience.” While incorrect in its speculation, the magazine was only echoing the public’s prevail­ing conjecture on the subject.4

Jim Lewis was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on 10 November 1936, which he always proudly states happens to coincide with the birthday of the U. S. Marine Corps. His father had served as a Warrant Officer during World War II, “having enlisted by fudging a bit on his age.” After the war the Lewis family relocated to Oklahoma City, where his father had taken on employment with the International Harvester Company. Following several promotions and transfers, the family moved once again to Houston, Texas. Here Jim Lewis attended 6th grade right through to high school, later attending the University of Houston, which meant he could live at home and work various jobs while undertaking his studies. During his junior year he joined the Marine Corps Platoon Leader’s program. By attending Platoon Leader’s Class (PLC) in the summer between his junior and senior years, he was able to be commissioned a 2nd lieutenant on graduation and receive twelve hours of college credits for the PLC program.

While at Quantico, Virginia, that summer he applied for and was accepted into flight school, which he was scheduled to begin after graduating from college. He admits that he had only chosen the Marine Corps because his father had enlisted in the U. S. Army, and like most young people he wanted to do something different. He served in the Far East after graduation from flight school, spending six months in

Japan and several more on the island of Okinawa, before serving with Marine Light Helicopter Squadron HMR(L) 261 on carriers engaged in supply duties to Vietnam in 1959. However he was not involved in any combat operations.

On his return to the United States he took the advice of Wayne Koons, a friend from flight school, and requested a transfer to the 2nd Marine Air Wing on the east coast at MCAS New River, North Carolina. He opted for this unit because Koons was then involved with the Air Wing in the Mercury capsule recovery program for NASA. Lewis’s request was approved, and he later became primary recovery pilot for the MR-4 mission.

“The Marine Corps had been selected [to recover the Mercury spacecraft from the ocean] for several reasons,” Lewis told the author. “One was that our helicopters had the payload capacity to lift the capsule. Similar Navy models combined a lot of sonar search equipment that reduced their payloads considerably. In addition, one of the Marine Corps’ missions was to deposit heavy external loads in small, tight jungle-type areas surrounded by trees… a task which required a fairly high degree of precision. While most pilots could accomplish this after training, Marine Corps pilots had been practicing it as part of their normal duties for quite a while.”

Another factor in favor of the Marine Corps acting as the recovery force was that they operated a base in Jacksonville, North Carolina, which was reasonably close to Langley AFB, Virginia, where NASA’s recently formed Space Task Group (STG) was then located.

Lewis was serving in HMR(L)-262 when he first met Gus Grissom at Langley. The astronaut was visiting the STG for a meeting concerned with the recovery of Mercury spacecraft. Asked how well he got to know Grissom back then, Lewis responded, “I didn’t get to know Gus really well… there was little personal contact at Langley.

I didn’t get to know Gus really well until I was a Manned Spacecraft Center employee [in Houston, Texas]. I think my impressions were like most. Gus was a serious guy, and the more one had the opportunity to work directly with him, the more one appreci­ated how good he was. He worked technical problems well, penetrating to the core, and making sure he and all of us took care of any peripheral concerns. In other words, I really appreciated how comprehensive his work ethic was. I imagine that’s one of the things that helped him survive his combat missions in Korea.”1

As primary recovery pilot for the suborbital MR-4 mission, Lewis was assigned to the lead helicopter, a Sikorsky HUS-1 Seahorse of the Marine Medium Transport Squadron, and given the transmission call-sign of Hunt Club 1. While in training for the assignment, Lewis and his team practiced for every conceivable scenario, which included the recovery of unmanned capsules from Little Joe booster flights fired out of Wallops Island, Virginia.

As the time grew near for Grissom’s suborbital flight, Lewis and his co-pilot John Reinhard from Bloomington, Illinois selected the three best-performing helicopters from their base and flew them to the USS Randolph (CVS-15), the prime recovery aircraft carrier. On the morning of the space flight they test flew all three helicopters to ensure they were at peak performance for the recovery effort.

When asked if he’d had much of a chance to discuss the loss of Liberty Bell 7 with Grissom on Grand Bahama Island or afterwards, helicopter pilot Jim Lewis replied, “We saw several of the astronauts at GBI, including Gus, but other than shaking hands and passing momentary pleasantries, I didn’t see Gus again until working at MSC in Houston.

“We really never discussed MR-4. I think we had moved on, and both of us knew we had followed nominal and contingency procedures properly. I had received two commendations for my actions that day and [later] Gus was subsequently selected to command the first Gemini and Apollo missions. No greater vote of assurance could have been given to him.

“We both knew he had done nothing to cause the door to detach itself that day, and we both knew we would not be able to find out specifically what happened, so there was little to discuss. Our conversations revolved around the present and future, and I’ll guarantee you we had plenty to keep us occupied. The work in those days was exhila­rating, intense, long, and hard… and, great fun.”14

The agency’s near-legendary flight controller Gene Kranz always set the tone in launch control with his calm, confident and professional manner. He would display very little emotion in the thick of a mission and he always remained focused on the tasks that lay ahead, like a general before a battle. He was not one to quibble or stay silent if he felt someone had underperformed, and he is quite adamant that Grissom did not blow the hatch.

“I spent a lot of time with Gus,” Kranz stated. “Everybody alleges that the guy panicked. Gus is not the kind of guy who would panic… he is a very controlled per­son. I also knew we had an inherently different hatch design, from the standpoint of a release mechanism, to the other [Shepard] one. I knew the limitations in testing, and if Gus says he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it. It’s that straightforward.”15

Another front-line exponent of Gus Grissom was McDonnell engineer Guenter Wendt, who helped insert Grissom and the other early astronauts into their spacecraft prior to hatch closure. Wendt, who died in May 2010, was a staunch admirer of Grissom. “We cannot prove what happened,” he told interviewer Jim Banke in June 2000. “It was an unexplained anomaly. But we know that Grissom did not blow the hatch.”

Based upon his interview with Wendt, Banke later wrote that to detonate the ord­nance, either Grissom would have had to firmly bang his wrist on a plunger inside the capsule, or a recovery diver alongside the spacecraft in the water could move a small panel on the outside and pull a T-shaped handle in the event that the astronaut was disabled. Later experience would show that if a Mercury astronaut were to detonate the hatch from the inside, the amount of force necessary to hit and activate the plunger would leave a nasty bruise, which Grissom didn’t have.

It was put to Wendt that perhaps the switch on the outside of the capsule was acci­dentally pulled. Wendt responded with a theory that the small panel on the outside of Liberty Bell 7 might have broken off as the spacecraft deployed its main parachute or shortly thereafter. In one transmission to Alan Shepard in the Mercury Control Center, Grissom said “you might make a note” of the fact that there was a six-by-six-inch hole in the parachute which Wendt said approximated the size of the access panel. Then, after splashdown, Wendt believes something may have tugged on the exposed handle just enough to cause the hatch to blow – perhaps a parachute line or a line associated with the green dye markers deployed from the capsule after splashdown. It is a known fact that after Grissom quickly egressed from the sinking spacecraft he reported becoming tangled in a marker line outside the hatch.

“That is the one [possibility] that I believe in,” Wendt concluded. “It is the most logical explanation. Can we prove it? No.”16

When asked to characterize Gus Grissom in the light of later criticism of him and his actions that day – particularly in the movie adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book, The Right Stuff – Jim Lewis expressed his particularly strong recollections and feelings.

“Gus flew 100 combat missions in Korea. He was a successful test pilot. He had been selected to be an astronaut. Many applied, few were chosen. He was selected to fly the second manned U. S. space mission. He was later selected to command both the first Gemini mission and the first Apollo mission. Those kinds of things do not happen to a ‘screw up.’

“That kind of person would never have survived combat or been a test pilot, and would not have been selected to be the first in line to blaze the way for new space programs… Gemini and Apollo. NASA obviously had confidence in Gus. I am sad that Wolfe and his media apparently chose to ignore what, to me, is the obvious. I went through the same flight school as Gus – a bit later – flew in the Far East, and was an engineering test pilot. Nothing in Wolfe’s book about flight school or the MR-4 mission or flying in general was characterized the way I would have chosen. but Wolfe neither interviewed me nor asked my opinion.

“In addition, think about this. MR-4 had a large window – the first spacecraft to have such – adjacent to the hatch. When the capsule was floating, Gus looked right out that window and could see water above the hatch sill and above the lower edge of the window, which was lined up with the lower sill of the hatch. Do you think anyone would have purposefully released a hatch under those conditions? I would add that since we had practiced such things, he also knew that I wasn’t there yet and obviously hadn’t lifted his spacecraft clear of the water. So then, did he accidentally hit the release? NASA records show that every astronaut who used that plunger to release a hatch got a bruise or skin abrasion from the rebound of the plunger. Gus’s post-flight physical documented that his body was totally unmarked. This is positive evidence that he did not ‘accidentally’ hit that plunger. Had he done so, he would have been even less able to escape its rebound than any of those who actuated it on purpose.

“Gus was a consummate pilot, a very bright individual, and a skilled engineer who had everyone’s respect. No one who knew him could or would argue with that state­ment, and that is how he should be remembered.”17

The Air India experience caused Newport to ponder further the difficult question of locating and salvaging the lost Mercury spacecraft. As he researched where it might be on the ocean floor, he realized that no existing ROV was capable of reaching an object three miles down. After returning from Ireland he asked the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) about Liberty Bell 7 “but got nowhere.” His next major salvage assignment involved the tragic loss of NASA’s space shuttle Challenger and her crew of seven on 28 January 1986. Newport spent two months working out of Port Canaveral, Florida on the contract salvage ship Stena Workhorse. The major discovery of the operation occurred while Newport was on a midnight shift piloting the Gemini ROV and brought a booster section to the surface. It happened to be the most crucial find of the search – the segment of the right-hand solid rocket booster where the burn-through of an O-ring had set in motion the fatal explosion and NASA’s greatest tragedy to that time.

“The operation was a real grind,” he says, “mostly due to the numerous technical problems we had with the Gemini ROV. During six weeks we repaired its electrical umbilical a staggering 32 times and even replaced the whole thing four times: not a good record. But while I was in Florida and on one of my rare days off, I visited the archives at the Kennedy Space Center and collected a little more data on Liberty Bell 7.”6 He also began to establish solid contacts in his ongoing research into the loss of Grissom’s spacecraft, including the Gemini and Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford, who would not only prove to be a staunch advocate of Newport’s plans but also provided important leads and privileged access to documents and information to assist him in his quest to pinpoint the location of the sunken craft. “Gene Cernan, John Yardley (McDonnell Aircraft Corporation) and Robert F. Thompson (JSC) were also a big help.”7

Another interested and influential ally was Max Ary, then President of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas, who had also considered the possibility of finding and recovering Liberty Bell 7. As he told Lawrence McGlynn for collectSPACE, “Actually my interest, relative to the Cosmosphere, in recovering the Liberty Bell 7 goes way back. In 1978, before the Cosmosphere opened but when we were still trying to put together a space artifact collection, one of my many basic goals was to place on exhibit examples of all three of the early manned spacecraft. We knew when we were going to get the Gemini and Apollo, but we knew, because of the rarity of the Mercury [capsules] that it was going to be our biggest challenge. When I realized that all of the available Mercury [craft] were on long-term exhibit, it occurred to me there was still one that might be made available, and that was LB7.

Being from Kansas, and with no knowledge of the ocean, I didn’t specifically see why there would be any problem in recovering something from 16,000 feet down. As they often say ‘ignorance is bliss.’”8

Seven American test pilots leapt to instant prominence on 9 April 1959, when NASA formally announced their names at a Washington D. C. press conference, introducing them as the space agency’s Mercury astronauts.

After several weeks of orientation lectures by members of the STG, each of the seven men had been assigned a specific area of specialization and responsibility to pursue. This came about after NASA realized that the entire scope of Project Mercury was so broad, and areas of development so numerous, that it was almost impossible for all seven astronauts to stay in contact with all the latest developments. Thus, at regular meetings, they would individually report on progress and any problems within their specific assignment. This meant that all seven astronauts were kept up to date on the latest developments without the need for them to be involved in studying or con­tributing to all areas connected with the Mercury program. These assignments were:

Scott Carpenter – Communications and navigation Gordon Cooper – Redstone booster John Glenn – Cockpit layout

Gus Grissom – Electromechanical and autopilot systems Wally Schirra – Life support systems Alan Shepard – Tracking and recovery Deke Slayton – Atlas booster

One aspect of the job in which all seven astronauts played an active part was visiting various contractor facilities in order to familiarize themselves with such things as mockups, hardware, and manufacturing processes. For instance, following his selection as a Mercury astronaut, Marine Lt. Col. John Glenn was assigned the task of working with the McDonnell engineers to help determine the layout of the capsule’s instrument panel. Now, with the basic shape of the spacecraft fully established and approved, final design and development work on the cockpit instrumentation could begin.

First of all, as Glenn recounted in We Seven, “McDonnell had to figure out a way to build [the capsule] so it would be as strong as possible and as light as possible at the same time. The engineers knew that every pound saved on the pad would provide an additional mile in range.”

As he explained, the wall of the capsule was made up of two layers of high-grade metal. “The outer layer consists of shingles made from a metal called Rene 41. These have been corrugated and then welded together to give them extra strength. The weld­ing technique had to be specially perfected so that the thin sheets of metal would not be torn or cracked in the process. The inner layer is made of titanium, a light, strong metal which was developed for jet engines and provides the strength of steel at about half the weight. The two layers are separated by a hollow space that provides extra insulation. It was an extremely difficult vehicle to build, and it was full of compro­mise. It was not perfect, but it was functional.”19

Gus Grissom’s prime responsibility was working on the Automatic Flight Control System and autopilot, especially for the upcoming orbital missions.

“The path that the capsule follows [after launch] can’t be altered after we come off the Atlas booster. Once we are in orbit, we can’t change that orbit. As we rotate around the Earth, the autopilot will maintain us in a position to be always looking at the Earth – which actually means that the capsule has to be turned 360 degrees each time we go around the Earth. If we want to change the position of our capsule and look in another direction, or if the autopilot should malfunction, we can then take over with the Manual Attitude Control System. To fly the Manual System we have a side arm controller; it is very similar to the control stick in an airplane – except that an airplane has rudder pedals also, while in this we have eliminated the rudder pedals and made it a function of the stick also. We have a three-axis control.”20

On 24 March, the Redstone rocket had been successfully rated for human use with the completion of the Mercury-Redstone Booster development (MR-BD) suborbital prov­ing flight, carrying a previously flown and unmanned, non-functional Mercury “boil­erplate” capsule. However, before a Redstone booster carried an astronaut on a similar flight it was deemed necessary to conduct an orbital test of the Mercury-Atlas combi­nation as a means of checking out the Mercury spacecraft in the actual orbital environ­ment. This MA-3 launch would take place on 25 April. The only subject to be carried on board Mercury spacecraft No. 8 was a mechanical astronaut, known to the NASA astronauts as an “astro-robot.”

For the MA-3 launch, Gus Grissom and fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper were assigned the grandstand spectacle of flying delta-wing F-106A jets over the Cape and keeping company with the Atlas rocket as it gathered speed after liftoff.

“I was to approach MA-3 at 5,000 feet, ignite my afterburner, and climb up in a spiral alongside to observe this early phase of its flight,” Grissom wrote in his memoir, Gemini. “Gordon Cooper would take over from his 25,000 feet level and continue observation of the big bird.”

Grissom then noted that everything seemed to go perfectly on launch day. “To allow me more observation time, it was decided I should go in at about 1,000 feet, keeping about half a mile distant from MA-3 after liftoff. No sweat.”

A successful liftoff for the MA-3 mission. (Photo: NASA)

Ignition and liftoff occurred right on schedule, and Grissom was having a dream flight climbing along with the ascending Atlas rocket. As he watched, he saw to his surprise the escape tower fire unexpectedly, prematurely hauling the Mercury capsule away from the Atlas. Things had begun to go seriously wrong when the Atlas failed to follow its pitch and roll programs. At 43 seconds into the flight the Range Safety Officer at the Cape decided to terminate the erratic path of the missile by transmitting the destruct command. This prompted the escape tower to react and haul the space­craft clear moments before the Atlas blew apart. A shocked Grissom later recorded the scene before him as “Kablooie! The biggest fireball I ever want to see!”

His pilot’s reactions instinctively came into force, and Grissom pulled over and away from the massive explosion, but spectators watching on the ground feared his aircraft had flown straight into the conflagration. A friend later told Grissom he had turned to his shocked wife on Cocoa Beach and mournfully stated, “Well, now there are only six astronauts.”

Gordon Cooper, stationed above at 15,000 feet, was horrified to see the ascending rocket erupt into a gigantic fireball right below his F-106. He later reported that the soaring escape tower and capsule missed his aircraft by what seemed to be 15 feet. Somehow, neither F-106 suffered any damage following the explosion.

Despite the scare, Grissom quickly recovered and decided to follow the released capsule as it descended on its parachute to the water. The test engineer in him had clicked in, and he knew that NASA technicians and others would welcome a report on this phase of the aborted flight. But there was another shock in store.

“I remember thinking, my gosh but these are big seagulls around here today. They were flying all around my plane. And then it hit me – these were no seagulls. They were chunks of the exploded Atlas, falling.” His luck held, as none of the tumbling chunks of rocket hit his aircraft. “It was quite a spectacle,” he noted, “but never again, thanks.”5

On the morning of the second launch attempt, as with the postponed liftoff two days earlier, a number of fixed-wing aircraft were flying at high level along the Atlantic missile range in order to assist with the location and recovery of the spacecraft as it broke through the clouds and splashed into the ocean near Grand Bahama Island.

The primary recovery chart for Grissom’s mission specifies two P2V Neptune air­planes from the Navy’s Patrol Squadron 5 (VP-5) based at NAS Jacksonville, Florida, call-signed that day Cardfile 5 and Cardfile 9. They had SARAH (Search and Rescue and Homing) equipment on board operated by either Navy or Air Force personnel as appropriate, and there was usually a NASA/STG representative. Not shown on the recovery chart was a third P2V call-signed Cardfile 23. Piloted by Navy Cdr. Lester Boutte, its assignment was to take up position in the predicted recovery zone, spot the spacecraft as it descended on its parachute and then circle high at high level to observe the recovery efforts. In addition there were two C-54 Douglas Skymasters call-signed Cardfile 21 and Cardfile 22, and a pair of SA-16 Grumman Albatrosses designated Dumbo 1 and Dumbo 2.

The three P2Vs had taken off at staged intervals beginning at 2:00 a. m. In addition to the aircraft flown by Lester Boutte, one was under the command of Lt. Cdr. Edward McCarthy, whose assignment was to fly near the Cape Canaveral launch site, ready to assist in the event of an early booster malfunction over the ocean. A third P2V was operated by Lt. Cdr. Anthony Ruoti, and was stationed downrange from the planned landing site for use in the event of an overshoot.

Cardfile 23 pilot Lester Boutte had been involved in a much-publicized rescue operation some 19 years earlier in November 1942, after a B-17D had been shot down over the Pacific. Boutte, then a radioman aboard a scouting two-man Navy OSTU Kingfisher, had spotted a life raft adrift in the ocean twenty days later, when any hope of finding survivors had all but gone. The survivors, many near death, were rescued and carried to safety – some even strapped to the small aircraft’s wings – by the Kingfisher’s pilot, Lt. William Eadie, USN, who taxied across the water to a rescue ship. One of those lucky survivors was famed World War I air ace Eddie Rickenbacker.

Also on board Cardfile 23 as an observer of the MR-4 flight was the STG’s Milton Windler. Back then he was a member of the Landing and Recovery Test Section headed by Peter Armitage, one of the Canadian AVRO engineering group that went to work for the newly established space agency NASA. In 1967 he was transferred into Flight Control and served as lead flight director for several Skylab and lunar missions, including Apollo 13 and Apollo 14.

“At the time of MR-4 our Recovery Branch was fairly small; twelve in all, headed by Robert Thompson,” Windler reflected. “My job at the time included evaluating, recommending, and testing the Mercury location aids. All of these were activated automatically and required no crew action. This included the SOFAR bombs, HF bea­con and the primary aid – the UHF SARAH. This was the same aid as used by the RAF pilots in the Battle of Britain. A very simple, clever scheme. It involved a special receiver and Yagi antennas on the P2V (and other) aircraft. The identical UHF beacon used by the RAF was installed on the Mercury spacecraft.

“We conducted many operational tests and, since I had a lot of experience with these tests, I went out to the primary landing area with the commander of the recovery loca­tion aircraft. This was usually (probably always) the senior pilot or aircraft commander for the array. I was there to represent NASA, answer questions and offer advice in the location process, and to provide post mission observations. The aircrews were well

trained and motivated and really needed little help from me however, except to translate some of the countdown events. NASA had recovery branch personnel with most of the ships as well, especially the [carrier] designated to be the primary recovery ship.”2 Apart from the USS Randolph, the prime recovery carrier, other ships involved in the recovery operation were the destroyers USS Conway (DD-507), USS Cony (DD- 508), USS Lowry (DD-770) and USS Stormes (DD-780); the oceanic minesweepers USS Alacrity (MSO-520) and USS Exploit (MSO-440); the tracking ships USNS Coastal Sentry (AGM-15) and USNS Rose Knot (AGM-14); and the salvage and res­cue ship with the appropriately name of USS Recovery (ARS-43).

Two months before the MR-4 flight, Capt. Wayne Koons was the prime recovery heli­copter pilot along with Lt. George Cox for the retrieval of Alan Shepard and his Freedom 7 spacecraft after the MR-3 mission. At the time of the Grissom flight he was assigned to the Mercury Control Center at Cape Canaveral along with recovery man­ager, Robert F. (‘Bob’) Thompson, who needed to know what had gone wrong and caused the loss of Liberty Bell 7.

Once Grissom was safely back on the USS Randolph, Robert Gilruth and Walt Williams came over to talk with Thompson, wanting to know what had gone wrong. “I don’t know,” Thompson admitted. “I’m not sure, but I’ll go and find out and let you know.” He asked Koons to accompany him on the one-hour flight out to Grand Bahama Island on a Navy administration S-2F Tracker that was kept on a skid strip at the Cape. On the way to GBI, Thompson contacted the Randolph and asked that helicopter pilots Lewis and Reinhard also be brought to the island for debriefing. Thompson and Koons arrived there about the same time as Grissom and the two Marine pilots.18

“We got down there, and they had just brought Gus in from the ship and taken him to the little Air Force medical facility,” Koons would later say of that day. “He was pretty tired and uncomfortable. As I recall, he was set up to debrief on mission phases, and after the mission he was supposed to use cue cards to talk into a tape recorder and talk through pre-launch and then talk through launch, and then… through descent and landing. Bob said, ‘Gus, help us out here. Would you mind doing your last card first?’”19

Thompson says he then asked Gus to go into a small, private room in the front of the barracks building. He discussed the events of that day with the two helicopter pilots, “got their briefing pretty quickly, and then went in and sat down and talked to Gus, just the two of us in the room. He sat on one bed and I sat on the other. So I talked to Gus about what went on. Well, after about five minutes of talking to Gus and the little bit of conversation I had with the helicopter pilots, I was pretty sure what the problem was. As far as I’m concerned, the problem was Gus got out of sequence. We had two safety devices on the door-activating mechanism. Now, this is something that we never did make a big to-do over after it was all over with, and I’m just telling you factually what went on. To open the door of the capsule after it landed, the two safety devices, you had to take a cap off. that covered the plunger that fired the door.

You had to take that cap off, turn it ninety degrees and take that off. Then you had reach up and put your finger in a ring and pull a pin out of the shaft on the plunger that fired the door, and then push a little fifty-cent-size plunger in. Once that plunger went in about an inch, it lined up with a hole that the firing pin came through that fired the door.

“So the picture here is, you’ve got a door-opening mechanism with two safety devices on it. The procedures were, he was supposed to stay there and not activate either one of these safety devices until the helicopter told him he had 1,800 rpm, which raised him above the water. Then he was supposed to take his helmet off, put his neck dam on, take his ECLS loose, close this, take the cap off, pull the pin, slide the plunger in, blow the door, sit on the sill and go out.

“Well, he wanted to do such a good job, that while he was waiting for Hunt Club to get everything ready, he says, ‘I’ll just take the cap off, and I’ll pull the pin, but I won’t push the plunger.’ But now he’s in a bobbing capsule with all kinds of stuff in there. Did he push the plunger? Of course not, you know, but it’s kind of like you had a gun with two safeties on it. You took the two safeties off and you put it up and you pointed it at somebody, but you didn’t pull the trigger, right? So he merely got out of sequence, trying to do such a good job.

“It’s pretty clear to me what happened, but I agree with Gus. No, he didn’t push the plunger. Did he get out of sequence? Yes. He told people that he got all ready, and he just shouldn’t have done it until he was told to do it. It’s just that simple. But there was no point in making a federal case, and we went on about our business. So I went to the Cape that night, found Bob Gilruth, went out in the parking lot, told him what had happened, and we went on with the program.”20

In 1987, following further ROV recovery operations, Newport took on a position with Oceaneering Space Systems, which involved working on the Space Station Freedom program. By this time he had established a fairly good grasp on where Liberty Bell 7 might be located, after poring over countless documents and charts. Then he had a major breakthrough.

“While working at Oceaneering Space Systems, I learned that they were planning to do some deep water sea trials using the Gemini ROV we’d used on the Challenger salvage. It had been updated and now had a 15,000 foot depth capability, so I made the suggestion: Why not add a side-scan sonar to the trial and use the opportunity to look for Liberty Bell 7? After considerable back and forth with several Oceaneering vice presidents, they decided to give it a try using Steadfast Oceaneering’s Deep Ocean Search System (DOSS).”9

The trial eventually went ahead, and the search was conducted in the area where Newport reasoned that the capsule might reside. There was excitement when two objects – one large and one small – were located, but in a curious twist of fate they later turned out to be pieces of wreckage from a downed aircraft. After several years spent scouring NASA charts and photographs and interviewing those present when Liberty Bell 7 went down, Newport remained undiscouraged. A thorough check of weather and sea conditions on the splashdown day in 1961, as well as currents in that section of the Atlantic, led him to the conclusion that Liberty Bell 7 did not drift far before sinking. He also believed that despite the massive pressure at that depth, the capsule would have remained basically intact. The only real uncertainty he harbored was whether it had moved horizontally during its nearly hour-long fall to the ocean floor. Nevertheless he was convinced he could locate the spacecraft, and mounted two further ROV expeditions in 1992 and 1993. But these were ancillary ventures attached to other seaborne operations, and were conducted in haste.

As he commented to the author, “Actually I was discouraged much of the time and gave up on the project during certain periods. You should see all the rejection letters I have. I was very concerned about the SOFAR [Sound Fixing and Radar] bomb carried in the spacecraft, even though there was no evidence it detonated – but it should have.”10 The SOFAR device was designed to go off at a depth of 3,000 feet if the spacecraft sank, allowing recovery vessels to pinpoint its location.

Newport continued to work with ROVs on various salvage projects, including the recovery of wreckage from yet another downed airliner. On 17 July 1996 the 747 on flight TWA 800 had mysteriously exploded and crashed into the Atlantic near East Moriches, New York. This time the probable cause was an explosion in a fuel tank sparked by a short circuit. In the first two weeks on the TWA operation, Newport’s team recovered the bodies of over 50 passengers using the Navy’s MR-1 ROV.

Over the years, Newport had participated in the development and use of ROVs and knew they were now far more reliable and easier to mobilize. “Overall, by 1998, things were looking up for me,” he recalled. Then he heard that Oceaneering might be conducting some dives on the RMS Titanic for the Discovery Channel, and he became part of the team, this time in charge of remote-piloting an ROV known as Magellan. “I actually got MSNBC and Discovery the ‘promo’ which they used to advertise the [Titanic] program by flying the Magellan straight up the edge of the bow, very close and very fast – so close that I knocked off rusticles [formations of rust similar in appearance to stalactites] from the towing shackle with the priceless WHOI [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution] high-resolution camera. A little too close I guess, but that’s what they wanted.”11

Prior to this expedition, he had written to the Discovery Channel in regard to his own near-quixotic quest to locate Liberty Bell 7. To his surprise, he was aboard the ship Ocean Discovery one day when he got a life-changing call from the Discovery Channel’s Tom Caliandro. After discussing the project it was agreed that a meeting would take place once he returned from his work on the Titanic.

“Discovery had actually already turned me down in the early 1990s regarding Liberty Bell 7. The only reason I wrote them again was at the urging of a friend of a man doing renovation work on our house; he wanted to break into documentary film making. I never expected anything to come of it. Then the next thing I knew, I was getting phone calls in Boston while mobilizing the Magellan 725.

“What happened, is that after the Titanic operation I came back home from Newfoundland because I was scheduled to do classified work for the Navy in England within a week or so. During my three days home before flying out, I met with Discovery in Bethesda, Maryland, and wrote a business plan which was delivered to Discovery while I was on my way to England. I think they gave final approval to the project early in 1999.”12