This is Cape Canaveral or as it was known in 1967 Cape Kennedy. It was renamed in 1963 as a tribute to the assassinated President but reverted to its original name 10 years later. And this is the burnt out shell of the Apollo 1 Spacecraft also known as the Apollo/Saturn 204. It went up in flames in the 27th of January 1967 during a training exercise at lord’s Pad 34.
The AS204 had a crew of three astronauts, all of them died in the accident. The space craft was due to be launched on top of a Saturn 1B Rocket as the first man flight of a block one Apollo capsule to orbit the earth. Scheduled for the first quarter of 1967, the flight was intended to launch operations ground checking and control facilities as well as monitor the performance of the Apollo/Saturn.
On the 27th of January rehearsal, the only plan was to simulate the launch. The three astronauts Virgil Grissom known as Gus, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were all strapped into their seats and hooked up to the capsule systems.
Straight away there were problems. As the air in the capsule was being replaced by pure oxygen, the crew members began running though their checklist of space activities while the communication problem was attended to and just half the past six, one of the crew was heard saying, ‘We’ve got a fire in the cockpit” A cry of pain was heard shortly after before transmission cut out. Ed White was seen on the television monitors trying to open the hatch. It is believed that the fire was due to a spark somewhere in the capsule, some 50 km of wiring. With pure oxygen in the cabin, it quickly raged out of control and with the hatch that could only be opened from the outside, the three men didn’t stand a chance.
The command pilot Gus Grissom that had a closed ship before, he was chosen as one of the seven project Mercury astronauts in 1959 after extensive testing, promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel while involved in the space program as the pilot of the Mercury-Redstone 4 or Liberty Bell 7, he nearly drowned during the splash down when the explosive bolts blew off the hatch prematurely. The space craft sank but Grissom was saved by a helicopter, insisting he had done nothing to detonate the explosives. He was believed by NASA officials and having cleared his name, resumed and selected to be the command pilot for the project Gemini mission in 1964.
Edward H. White II was the senior pilot on board the Apollo 1. He had an impressive record. Even amongst astronauts, he was considered a high profile by NASA and was selected as part of the second group of astronauts in 1962. Following on from Grissom, he was the pilot of the Gemini 4 and decoding him in the 3rd of June 1965, he became the first American to make a space warp. He was also the backup command pilot for Gemini 7 and because of the usual crew rotation process; he was due to pilot the Gemini 10 which would have make him the first of his group to fly twice. Instead he was promoted in 1966 to give the command module pilot for AS204.
The final member of the crew was pilot Roger B. Chaffee, a rookie. Chaffee was lieutenant commander in the United States Navy, flying the missions in RA3Ds. He gained official recognition for his contribution during the Cuban Missile Crisis although his exact role was never made clear. In 1963, he was picked to join the third group of astronauts and at yet to make a space flight when he was selected as the lunar module pilot for Apollo 1.
The backup crew from April to December 1966 was James McDivitt, David Scott and Rusty Schweickart who was later flew on Apollo 9 and the backup crew from December 1966 to January 1967 consisted of Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham.
After the tragic end of AS204, a number of changes were made to the Apollo modules including a slow change to 100% oxygen, a hatch that could be opened from within and a fewer than 10 seconds and flammable materials being replaced with self distinguishing ones.
Launch Complex 34 was more or less dismantled but the reinforced platforms still stands today. On its side were a couple of flags commemorating the three men who died; the second one closest with the words, “Godspeed to the crew of Apollo 1.”
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