A NASA official said today that one of the three astronauts | trapped aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft was able to report the disastrous flash fire an instant before the three men perished. “One of the astronauts said the spacecraft’,” Apollo program, Phillips manager told Maj. a news Gen. conference. But Phillips said he didn’t know which of the three astronauts said it.
It was the first indication that the three astronauts had time for any action when an apparent electrical spark sent a roaring inferno through their spacecraft 218 feet off the ground during a test Friday. Phillips called the news conference as a blue ribbon board of space experts started a high security search into the cause of the flash fire that snuffed out the lives of spacemen Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee.
“At 6:31 (p.m.), observers in the pad area and- watching TV monitors heard a report from one of the astronauts that there was a fire aboard the spacecraft,” Phillips said. There was a flash of fire which “was observed to essentially surround the spacecraft for an instant, very, very few seconds,” Phillips added. Phillips said space officials would try to learn which of the three astronauts made the report from tapes. Apparently it was the last word’ from any of them. The deaths of the three spacemen were the first known of astronauts directly involved in the space exploration and may have set back America’s race to the moon beyond the 1969 target date. The bodies of Grissom, White and Chaffee lay at a base dispensary here awaiting funeral plans while space experts sought to learn the cause of the flash fire. Phillips said there was a fire burning around the outside of the spacecraft when rescue workers arrived.
One blockhouse technician summed it up by saying: “There was a sudden flash and that was that.” Blockhouse television cameras were trained on the astronauts when disaster struck, and the investigators hoped that further study of these tapes might give up some additional clue. The fire flared while the simulated launch was in a “hold” condition at T-minus-10 minutes. The hold had been called because of communications problems, presumably between the spacecraft and the blockhouse. An official said the “hold” was about to end when the fire broke out.
While the search went on, officials banned newsmen from coming within three miles of launch pad 34 where the Saturn rocket still stood in its gantry with the Apollo spacecraft on top, 218 feet off the ground. All flights over the Cape, both civilian and military, also were barred.
Stunned and saddened U.S. space experts today faced the prospect of a delay lasting at least several months in the American man-to-the-moon program as a result of the Apollo 1 tragedy. Before they can make any plans at all, the experts must pinpoint what caused the flash fire as they ground tested Apollo 1 on launch pad 34. Even if the fire-gutted Apollo 1 space cabin is replaced with equipment already available, at least several months of tests will be necessary–the same tests that already had delayed Apollo 1 for three months. The tragedy of Apollo I came just when the $23 billion venture appeared finally gathering headway for the push to the moon.
In contrast to the Gemini program which ran off with few hitches after a slow start, the Apollo program has been plagued with one woe after another.
Here is a half-hour special compiled by NBC Radio on January 27, 1967 reporting the disaster.
