The Unbroken Chain

Chapter 7 - Three astronauts at Pad 34

On November 11, 1966, Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin had marched up to the white room with signs on their backs saying “The End”. For the astronauts, Gemini 12 marked the end of their two man training program. For most McDonnell employees, it marked the end of them careers working in manned spaceflight. North American Aviation had the contract to build and support the Apollo spacecraft.

In the white room, Jim had presented me with a giant, four foot check made out for one million Deutsche marks. “Severance pay,” he told me with that booming trademark laugh of his. At the post flight dinner party, I seized my final opportunity for a prank. I had arranged for two friends on the Cocoa Beach police force to make an unexpected visit. As the two astronauts told their stories at the front of the room, the two uniformed cops worked their way between the crowded tables from the back. When they got up to the two guests of honor, everyone in the room fell silent.

“Are you two gentlemen James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin?” one of the officers demanded.

The pair looked at each other, not knowing what to make of the situation.

“Uh..., yes sir, that’s us.”

As handcuffs were produced the cop announced loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear, “We have a warrant for your arrest.” Jim and Buzz were completely baffled. “What’s the charge?” one of them asked.

“Well there’s a gentleman in the back of the room who has filed charges against you for passing a bad check.”

The astronauts scanned the room to see who it was. I stood up at my table, check in hand, and pointed at them.

“Gotcha!”

It was over. For the first time in six years I found myself on the outside looking in. I must admit, I had mixed feelings about it. The stresses of the job had been considerable, but I still loved working in manned spaceflight. Now, my future was unclear.

Most of the McDonnell people left the Cape and returned to St. Louis. A few managed to get hired on with some of the other contractors working on the Apollo program. It was a way of life in the space program. New contractors came in on new programs. They brought their own personnel, but usually tried to hire some of the experienced people from the previous project.

McDonnell had received a small contract to develop a wire-guided antitank rocket for the Army. A development and test group was formed and 1 joined them in newly rented office space in nearby Titusville. My job assignment was to build and operate a test firing range in the outskirts of the little town. It was quite a letdown from the previous programs I had worked on, but at least I was staying close to the Cape.

Money for equipment and supplies was rather scarce. We did a lot of creative scrounging. Some materials were even secured from places like flea markets and local hardware stores. Walter Burke, the vice president in charge of the project, once mentioned that our firing table looked just like the saw stand he had in his basement at home. He had gotten it from Sears, he said. I laughed and told him that was where we got ours, too. Another time he asked me about a rumor he had heard. Was it true that I had purchased an entire railroad car of Celotex? Yes, I said, that was true. You see, I had been offered this bulk of material at a very reduced rate because it had been water damaged. We used the stuff at the impact area on our firing range and it did not matter in the slightest if it was a bit blemished. He was all smiles -1 had saved him some money.

Meanwhile, my old pal Wally Schirra went to Deke Slayton with the idea of getting me hired on with North American as the Apollo pad leader. Deke must have liked the idea because he set up a meeting for me with a group of North American managers. It did not go very well.

I showed them my previous job description, the one that John Yardley had drafted, and explained my need to have complete control in the white room and in the selection of personnel. They did not seem at all comfortable with my requirements. A few days later I received their response. North American, they said, had engineers and technicians on the project who had been with the company for twenty years. They had a strong management structure in place, and they simply could not give that type of authority to a new-comer. I was offered a watered-down version of the position, but had to decline.

hi the meantime, we were setting up the test firing range miles away from civilization. A six-foot high chain link fence kept out uninvited guests with the exception of a few raccoons, armadillos, and snakes. In a way, it was a relief from the high pressure job 1 had had in Mercury and Gemini. And as always, there was a little time for fun.

Driving down the dirt road to the site one day, I shot a large rattlesnake. I threw him into the trunk and earned him into work. We carefully coiled him just outside the gate. To his head, we attached some monofilament line and threaded it through the fence, going back to our office trailer. When guests would appear at the gate, we would pull on the line and the big snake would rear up in a belligerent pose. The effect was great.

I remember when a shop supervisor that we particularly disliked stopped in to check on his people. Waiting at the gate to be let in, he was instead greeted by our scaly mascot. He jumped back so quickly that he nearly fell over. Scrambling back to his pickup truck, he hopped in and speeded away in a cloud of white dust. We never saw him again.

My job at the test range was fairly interesting and had none of the stress that I had lived with for the last six years. I was glad to have extra time to spend with my family and especially enjoyed the more frequent opportunities to go fishing. Even in the winter, it was frequently warm enough to “wet a line” by mid afternoon.

Our house on Bayside Drive was situated on a small canal that emptied into the Banana River. It took only a matter of minutes to get my boat lowered from its hoist into the water. We typically fished for large sea trout and sheepshead using live shrimp for bait. The shrimp were easy to catch at night. You just lowered a Coleman lantern close to the water’s surface. Right at the line where the light met the shadow under the lantern, the little guys would come investigating. You had to be quick with your net. They would see it coming and dive for the bottom with a flick of their pink tails.

During this time period, stories were widely circulating about NASA’s dissatisfaction with North American’s progress. Both the spacecraft and the Saturn’s second stage were under development by the company. And both projects were falling further and further behind schedule while costs escalated at a disturbing rate. A report produced by Major General Sam Phillips, the Apollo Program Director, was highly critical and rumors surfaced that North American might get canned altogether.

Although the contract had been decided several years earlier, we always wondered how North American managed to get into the spacecraft business.

Guenter poses with his joke coupon and Gordon Cooper’s response mounted on a plaque, (see below)

The gift presented by Guenter and his team to Wally Schirra after the completion of his Sigma 7 Mercury flight in October 1962.

Guenter reunites in 1972 with John Glenn for the tenth anniversary celebration of Glenn’s flight.

The view which so impressed Mr Mac of McDonnell Aircraft. The white coats and hats were standard wear for Guenter and Iris team during the Mercury and Gemini program. The crew inspect MR-1 in Hangar S.

The entrance to complex 14 is now marked with a billboard. Four successful orbital flights were launched from the Pad.

Guenter poses with America’s new two-man spacecraft, the Gemini. The cramped two-seater barely had the living volume of a small car and yet contained everything needed to sustain its crew for nearly two weeks.

Pad 19 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This was the launch site for all of the two-man Gemini flights. The white room can be seen suspended at top right as the erector is retracted to a horizontal position just prior to launch. Guenter’s office at Pad 19 was barely a quarter mile from the launch pad.

Astronaut Wally Schirra shares a joke with Guenter prior to departing on his flight aboard Gemini 6.

Buzz Aldrin assists in the preparation of Gemini 9A. The flight was launched June 3rd 1966 to take Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan to a rendezvous with an Agena target vehicle. More close-out crew humor can be seen in the signs above the spacecraft. The magnet at right signified Cernan’s tracking device for the Agena.

Stafford and Cernan respond to Guenter’s teams’ signs (above left). Guenter is at far right, Buzz Aldrin can be seen second from right. The slogan held by the crew is the motto from a car rental firm.

Astronaut John Young had complained about needing a pair of pliers to accomplish his EVA activity. Always obliging Guenter supplied the pair above. Astronaut Deke Slayton is at left while Michael Collins stands with his back turned at right. July 18, 1966.

“What me worry?” Astronaut Buzz Aldrin wearing a sketch of Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman character on his helmet salutes Guenter before departing on Gemini 12 with Jim Lovell. November 11 1966.

After the successful conclusion of the Gemini program Guenter brief!) left his job at the Cape.

After the tragic fire aboard Apollo 1, he returned to his job in the employ of Rockwell. Certification for the job was extensive. Some of the equipment certifications are at left.

Guenter in his “position” at the hatch of the Apollo 13 Command Module. Another technician can be seen inside the spacecraft. An astronaut arrives at right.

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins prepares to leave for the moon with assistance from suit technician Joe Schmitt. Schmitt was as much of a fixture at the Cape as Guenter.

Guenter prepares to remove the Apollo 11 astronauts after the countdown demonstration test. Visible in the hatchway is Michael Collins.

October 1971, John Young enters the command module at the KSC altitude chamber.

Guenter holds his gift for Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, a walking stick for “the old geezer.” Guenter is wearing the German army helmet given to him moments before by Shepard.

The Apollo 16 crew, John Young, Ken Mattingly and Charkie Duke get an education in unaided crew egress training from Guenter.

Time-line study — astronauts Charlie Duke and James Ragusa with Guenter on Pad 39A. October 1967

Crew return ceremony for Apollo 17 at the Vehicle Assembly Building. (L. to R.) Ron Evans, Command Module Pilot; Guenter, Gene Cernan, Commander; Harrison Schmitt, Lunar Module Pilot.

The Apollo-Soyuz back-up crew get a lesson in egress training from Guenter. (L. to R.) Jack Lousma, Alan Bean, Ron Evans, Guenter.

“And this is supposed to be a hi-tech operation?”

Guenter at the South gate entrance to Cape Canaveral United States Air Force Station. The guard house in the background still flies the flag which Guenter fought to install. (Courtesy Robert Godwin 2001)

They had done impressive things with the X-15, but had virtually no involvement in Mercury and Gemini. Plus, they were already burdened with the development of the Saturn S-II stage. Getting the contract for the Apollo spacecraft was a true testament to the tenacity of the company’s executive engineering wizard, Harrison Storms.

North American had a fundamentally different philosophy about operations than we had at McDonnell. They piled on layers of bureaucrats reporting through endless levels back to their headquarters in Downey, California. McDonnell, on the other hand, chose its top people and moved them to the Cape, giving them the authority they needed to make decisions on the spot. Our chain of command was much shorter and red tape was always held to a minimum.

John Yardley’s policy was, “I’ll pick the best systems engineers, and they own those systems at the Cape.” People in St. Louis could make suggestions, but they could not give direct orders. In fact, I remember one meeting at the home plant where Yardley stated, “Anyone who thinks he needs to be the final authority in any test, consider yourself transferred to the Cape. I expect to see you there on Monday morning!” Hoping that McDonnell might somehow get a chance to rejoin the program. I began studying all the Apollo information I could lay my hands on. Over the next few weeks, I went through dozens of thick documents and engineering reports. There seemed to be enough paper that if you stacked it all up, you could climb your way to the moon. The program was mammoth, much bigger than I had ever imagined. It was a rude awakening.

In Mercury and Gemini we had worked with hundreds and hundreds of people and up to six major interfaces. But in Apollo, instead of hundreds of people, there were tens of thousands involved. The numbers of government and contractor interfaces seemed countless. The sheer size of the project was overwhelming. It was obvious that I had a lot to learn.

Luckily, the basic ingredients of rocketry had not changed. The propellants and pyrotechnics were pretty much the same that we had used in Mercury and Gemini. Most of the systems were similar, just updated and bigger. In a nutshell, the technical stuff was essentially unchanged. Just a lot more of it, and in most cases, of a much larger size.

Friday, January 27, 1967 was a crisp, sunny day. It was one of those days when you were glad that you lived in Florida. Bright blue skies and temperatures in the high 60’s. I had spent most of the day indoors, working on some engineering drawings in the trailer. At day’s end, I joined the rush-hour traffic for the drive home. By the time I arrived it was nearly dark. I was completely unaware that a significant event had just occurred over at the Cape. It was probably after dinner that I heard the report on the television. There had been a major fire in the spacecraft out at Pad 34.

I spent most of the evening on the telephone trying unsuccessfully to get information. TV reports continued to dribble in until finally it was announced. The crewmen of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and rookie Roger Chaffee, were dead. 1 remember the sudden weight I felt in my shoulders. I slumped down in my chair, as if I weighed a thousand pounds. Flashback pictures went through my mind. I could see Gus, Shepard, and me on the beach fishing, competing to see who could land the biggest one. I remembered riding in the Corvettes with them, racing to see who was fastest. All sorts of scenes ran through my head. Dinners with Gus and the quiet Ed White in Cocoa Beach and the stories of adventure they told. There would be no more stories now. It seemed the blackest moment of my entire life and I cried at their loss.

A little more news filtered out over the next couple of days, none of it comforting. The test had been what was called a “plugs out” test, done in preparation for a launch that was scheduled for February. Basically, the spacecraft underwent a countdown leading up to a simulated launch. At that point, the spacecraft would be disconnected from external power and would rely on its own internal power. The objectives were threefold: (1) to verify compatibility of the spacecraft with the launch vehicle, (2) to test the spacecraft systems with umbilical and ground support equipment disconnected, and (3) to check for any electrical problems at the time of disconnect. The countdown was holding at T-10 minutes due to communications problems. Disconnect was never achieved. An electrical spark underneath Grissom’s couch amidst thirty miles of wiring had probably ignited the inferno.

When I got a phone call from Deke Slayton, I was a little surprised.

“We’d like you to transfer to North American and take over the white room operations,” he said.

I told Deke that it would not work. I needed the authority to do the job properly, and North American had already made it clear that they weren’t willing to give that.

“Well I’ll tell you that I’m sitting here next to Mr. Bill Bergen and he assures me that you will have all the authority you need.”

Now I did not know who Mr. Bergen was, but Deke put him on the phone. The conversation was very short. He promised that his managers at KSC would comply with my requirements and that I should go over and talk to a Mr. John Moore about the details.

Two days later I was in Mr. Moore’s office.

We went over what I considered the job obligations to be and discussed my exact duties and authority. I was impressed by the man. He had a solid background in flight test and had a very good understanding of the issues. In a little over two hours, we had hammered out an agreement, and I was back in the space program. I was to report for duty on June 12.

As we were winding up the meeting, I had one last question. Who was the Mr. Bergen I had first spoken with? Mr. Moore pointed to an organizational chart on the wall.

“You see the box at the top?” he asked. “The one that says ‘President’ ?” My first major assignment with North American was to review the findings of the accident review board.

Immediately after the fire, NASA Administrator James Webb had placed Langley’s director, Floyd Thompson, in charge of a team to investigate the accident. Thompson had been at Langley for nearly forty years and was a very heavy hitter. He knew how to get things done. Eight members, including Frank Borman and Max Faget, were selected and went quickly to work.

The burnt out command module was completely disassembled and spread out for study. Every piece was carefully analyzed and compared to another command module which had been shipped in from Downey. The team, supported by up to 1,500 people, worked feverishly for weeks.

The board produced a series of preliminary reports of increasing complexity. When the final report came out, it contained nearly 3,000 pages. It was a lot of material to wade through. I spent countless hours going over the details in my new office in what had been the MSOB, now called the Operations & Checkout Building.

Since the hatch system is such an important part of the story, let me take a moment to describe it. First you have to understand that the command module - the spacecraft itself - was basically in two layers. The innermost layer was termed the pressure vessel, and formed the air tight inner walls of the cabin. Surrounding that, a crew compartment heatshield provided protection against the heat of reentry. Now, covering all of that was a third layer called the Boost Protective Cover. It was designed to protect the command module during launch and would be jettisoned once the spacecraft entered orbit. Each of these three layers had a separate hatch. Thus, opening up the spacecraft was not a simple procedure.

It had been determined that the fire was just that - a fire and not an explosion. The spacecraft had been full of combustible materials and a spark of unknown origin had set off the blaze in the oxygen rich environment. The fire quickly grew in intensity and pressure inside the spacecraft built up. In just fifteen seconds, the pressure vessel ruptured releasing fire and smoke into the space between the cabin and the heatshield, which then escaped through access hatches into the white room. Technicians who had rushed in to try to extract the crew were turned back by the inferno.

Returning with a few fire extinguishers, the men frantically went to work to get the spacecraft’s three hatches open. By then, the fire inside the spacecraft had probably starved itself of oxygen, but smoke still roiled out and several secondary fires had started. Flames licked downward over the sides of the Saturn booster and everyone must have been terrified that the whole damn thing might go up.

The smoke was so thick that rescuers had to make repeated trips back out to the open catwalk for fresh air. By the time they finally got the inner hatch open, a little over five minutes had elapsed. In a cryptic message to the block house, the pad leader, Don Babbit, reported that the crew was dead.

The general findings of the review board showed a disturbing lack of coordination and preparedness. The primary factors causing the fire were obviously the pressurized oxygen environment and the quantity of flammable materials on board. Had either of these been missing from the equation, there probably would have been no fire to begin with.

Contributing factors to the tragedy were noted as (a) deficiencies in the design, manufacture, and inspection of the spacecraft, (b) schedule pressures on NASA and North American and (c) poor communications between the various systems groups. But specific planning failures were the real broken links in the chain:

(1) The organizations responsible for the planning, conduct, and safety of the test failed to identify it as hazardous.

(2) Contingency preparations for the rescue of the crew from the internal command module during a fire were not made.

(3) No procedures for this type of emergency had been established, either for the crew or for the spacecraft work team.

(4) The emergency equipment located in the white room and on the spacecraft work levels was inadequate.

(5) Emergency fire and rescue teams were not in attendance.

After reviewing the paperwork, facilities, and equipment, I got to work defining changes we were going to have to make. First we needed to develop comprehensive emergency procedures for the flight crews and pad personnel. Extensive fire fighting and rescue training for everyone at the pad would have to be included. This would further imply the requirement for better emergency equipment and fire resistant clothing. Next we needed to create well-marked escape routes and install a slide wire system. As our ultimate test of proficiency, I set the goal of rescuing a flight crew from a closed spacecraft in less than two minutes.

In Mercury and Gemini, we had been faced with numerous emergencies. We dealt with them successfully because we had played my favorite game: “What if?” This simple little idea of expecting the unexpected had obviously been overlooked in Apollo. We were going to have to establish credible types of emergencies that could occur and then create contingency plans for them.

Throughout much of 1967, the industry remained in turmoil. North American had banished Stormy Storms to some backwater post, leaving the Command Module in the hands of the man who hired me, Bill Bergen. NASA’s Apollo Program Manager, Joe Shea, fell under the ax and was replaced by George Low. The effects rippled down through both organizations and heads rolled at all levels. It was sad that many of the people chosen for termination or transfer were merely scapegoats. 1 was particularly saddened to see this happen to John Moore, the North American manager who I first reported to. Even the other contractors failed to escape the bloodletting. Everyone took a long hard look at their roles in the space program and realized that even seemingly insignificant deficiencies could not be allowed to continue.

Right from the beginning, I found dedicated people who were willing to help in developing and implementing the new procedures we would need at the pad. Without their considerable efforts, we could not have put the safety and emergency program together.

From the NASA side, it was James Ragusa who provided the necessary equipment and facilities. This was a very large undertaking in itself. Not only did we require new equipment at the launch complex itself, but we needed a substantial amount of support in creating fully-stocked training facilities.

The fire department provided us with a training officer. His last name escapes me now, but his first name was Terry. He was a unique individual, indeed.

Terry was as tough as any drill sergeant you could ever find. He was a steely, no-nonsense kind of guy. Being prepared was more than a motto for him - it was a mission. He must be one of the toughest teachers I have ever met. He drove us hard and had no problem with making an example out of anyone. In the remote training area that was set up, he even put out markers with the names of people who had failed his classes.

It wasn’t unusual to get minor burns and injuries while running through Terry’s obstacle courses. He believed in accurate simulations. Wearing fireproof suits with specially designed breathing gear, Terry would run us through seemingly endless courses just to see how far we could get. Halfway through, we would be forced to change to a new breathing mask only to find out that he had stuffed a paper towel way down deep in the hose.

From our own North American safety department, I was assigned a very handy guy by the name of Hank Waddell. He kind of reminded me of Sergeant Barton, our chief scrounger during the Gemini days. Like Barton, Waddell knew how to find things.

The cotton clothing we had worn at the pad had worked well so far, but we had never had to rely on it for protection from a substantial fire. Clearly, that was one possibility that we could no longer ignore. Hank and I discussed the need for flame retardant coveralls for everyone at the pad. At that time, 1967, little research had been done in the area so it took some effort to find suitable materials.

Hank started working through his channels and discovered an outfit that was testing a flame-proof suit made of a new fabric called NOMEX. They put together a dramatic presentation with two mannequins. One was clothed in our cotton overalls, and the other in their NOMEX suit. Both were set afire. After several minutes the flames burned out revealing the damage. The mannequin wearing the overalls was severely burned. Only a few charred scraps of the cotton suit remained. The other mannequin, the one protected by the NOMEX material, came through without a scratch. It may have gotten hot in there, but the NOMEX did not ignite and it totally protected the mannequin from the flames outside.

We knew we had found the material we wanted, so Hank got busy overseeing the design of new NOMEX overalls, undergarments, and socks. The new protective clothing proved to be so effective, that it is still used today in the Shuttle program. The technology spun off into the private sector and NOMEX remains the material of choice for pit crews and race car drivers.

One problem was discovered in our initial tests of NOMEX. It produced static electricity. Working in areas filled with pyrotechnic SQIBs and exotic fuels, this was one side effect that we could not live with. A chemical was identified which, when applied to the fabric, prevented it from developing a static charge. Unfortunately, this treatment had to be applied every time the garments were washed. The commercial laundries refused to get involved in any of that, so poor Mrs. Waddell ended up with the job of washing our coveralls in her home washing machine and applying the chemical to keep them anti-static. Luckily for her, we were eventually successful in finding a commercial cleaning outfit which would clean and treat our NOMEX clothing. I would hate to think of all the managers’ wives still busy washing hundreds of flame-retardant work suits.

NOMEX was one of those breakthrough materials that changed the way we live. Today, it remains the premiere material for clothing used in hazardous environments. And I think the main credit for its acceptance should go to Hank Waddell.

In the fall of 1967, North American merged with Rockwell, completing the post-fire transformation. North American’s chairman, Lee Attwood, was replaced by Willard F. Rockwell, Jr. The team responsible for the development and manufacture of the command module was filled with new names and new ideas. It was time to get on with the goal of putting a three man Apollo crew into orbit.

The command module, or CM, that had been destroyed in the fire was termed a Block-I spacecraft. It had never been meant to leave Earth orbit and was a stepping stone, more or less, to the more sophisticated Block II version. What really kept the Apollo program going after the accident was the fact that the Block II CM was already under development. The faults and oversights in the spacecraft that took the lives of the Apollo 1 crew drove hundreds of critical changes that would be incorporated into the new CM. It was painfully clear to everyone that we could not afford another disaster. This time we were determined to leave no room for mistakes. A huge price had been paid, and the lessons we learned as a result were ones that would not go ignored.

The entire Apollo program schedule was essentially scrapped and redefined. It was obvious that new design and testing requirements would set us back for well over a year. This would definitely strain our ability to reach the moon before 1970. But everyone in the program felt very fortunate to have the opportunity at a second chance.

It has been said many times that without the Apollo 1 fire, we might never have made it to the moon. Perhaps it is true. As tragic as the fire on the pad was, the public might have been even more horrified by the loss of a crew in space. There is, of course, no way to ever know. But I do feel confident that the accident caused a renewed interest in safety and quality control. As the work continued and stability began to return, new links in our imaginary chain emerged. New systems, new procedures, and new people. The aftermath of the fire saw the development of the most sound practices yet seen in our manned spaceflight adventure.

As the end of 1967 approached, many new changes began to appear. The two most obvious changes in the spacecraft involved the hatch and the internal atmosphere during tests. A modified version of the hatch on the Boost Protective Cover remained, but the spacecraft’s two integral hatches were replaced with a single hatch. It could be opened in an emergency in less than 20 seconds. And no longer would pure oxygen be used onboard the spacecraft during tests. A mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, much less capable of promoting a fire, would be used anytime the cabin needed to be pressurized. These two features alone would prevent any repeat of the disaster that had occurred in January.

In the white room and on the service structures, new gas masks and fire extinguishers were installed along with a variety of other pieces of emergency equipment. During tanking and any other hazardous operations, NOMEX suits were mandatory. A slide wire system, evolved from the one we had designed for Gemini, was installed. It was still rather primitive but would do the job. At the base of the gantry, three M-113 armored vehicles stood ready to shuttle people away from the pad in the case of an emergency evacuation. This created a new requirement for all the astronauts. Now they had to be trained as tank drivers. I imagine it was one little duty they kind of enjoyed.

We continued a vigorous program of practice drills for various types of emergencies. A special group of white room technicians had been trained in firefighting, rescue, and first aid procedures. They wore yellow arm bands on their white room coveralls. On each shift, the shop supervisor had the responsibility of assuring that the minimum number of yellow arm bands was on station. Everyone on the pad felt just a little bit safer seeing these guys up there.

Every man in my closeout crew was a volunteer and was hand-picked. Among his physical requirements, he had to demonstrate that he could extract a fully-suited astronaut weighing over 260 pounds from the command module while wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus. This test was not easy to accomplish. You really had to be in top physical condition. Not every man who applied for the job passed.

The closeout crew was composed of six individuals: the pad leader, a backup astronaut, a mechanical technician, a NASA inspector, and two suit technicians. The makeup of this crew never changed throughout the Apollo program. In an emergency, these people were charged with the goal of extracting an entire crew from the spacecraft in less than two minutes.

As he had been on Gemini-Titan 3, Wally had been Gus’ backup for Apollo 1. The next flight, scheduled for sometime in the fall of 1968, was his. He would command the crew of Apollo 7 which included rookies Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham.

With permanent facilities now available for everyone at Kennedy Space Center, working conditions were much improved. The astronauts had extensive crew quarters on the third floor of the Operations & Checkout building. Three crews were involved in each mission: the flight crew itself, the backup crew, and-a support crew. For the nine astronauts, three suites, each containing three private bedrooms and a living room, were set up in the O&C building. They were nicely furnished, much like what you might expect in an inexpensive hotel. In addition to the suites, there was a kitchen, gym, and conference room in the third floor quarters. Elsewhere in the large building were indoor handball courts and in the back, an altitude chamber for running spacecraft tests.

Although Apollo 7 would be launched from Pad 34, across the Banana River from KSC, it would be our last manned mission from the Air Force facilities. We were in the transitional phase of moving our entire operation onto Merritt Island. The huge tract was called MILA (pronounced my-lah) and stood for Merritt Island Launch Area. The entire area, larger than Cape Canaveral itself, was dedicated exclusively to the Apollo program. We continued to call it all “The Cape,” but in actuality it was KSC.

At the southern end of MILA, due west from Complexes 19 and 34, were located the O&C building and, the flight crew training building, and the new NASA Kennedy Space Center Headquarters building. Looking to the north, the Vertical Assembly Building, or VAB, rose up like a square mountain. Completed in 1965, the VAB was the largest open-volume enclosed structure ever built. Nearly as tall as the Washington Monument and over twice the length of a football field in both directions it was simply huge. Huge! It was so big, in fact, that you could drive the Statue of Liberty through it without ever touching a single part of the building. Over one million square feet of insulated aluminum siding were required to cover it. In its cavernous interior, monster Saturn 5 boosters would be erected, capped with Apollo command modules. Situated next to the VAB, the new Launch Control Center (LCC) with its four firing rooms looked to the east. The four story concrete building was an architect’s delight. It was a beautiful blend of style and functionality. It would soon become the nerve center for all test and launch activities. Three miles east of the VAB/LCC and just a quarter mile inland from the Atlantic Ocean were our two new launch pads, known as 39A and 39B. From these staging points, our assault on the moon would be conducted.

Early 1968 was a very busy time. As my company, North American Rockwell, continued to work on the redesigned command module, everyone else was busy with testing and training. A lot of the astronauts were spending most of their time at the Cape. I remember Wally joking once that the only reason his marriage had held together was that he was always gone.

The astronauts had a nice beach house at their disposal over on the Air Force side. But hounding by the press remained a problem whenever they tried to venture outside the Cape facilities. As in Mercury and Gemini, a lot of the guys would come over to my house for refuge. Sometimes it was just to have a place to rest or to study. Other times we would go fishing or water skiing.

I recall one skiing episode in particular. It probably happened back during Gemini - I’m not sure exactly when. But John Yardley was driving the boat, pulling Wally behind. John was turned around watching him, laughing and waving. Focusing his attention back on his driving, he realized that he had steered the boat into a narrow inlet. He whipped it around 180 degrees, barely avoiding a crash. Wally went slinging out to the side and skidded right up onto dry land. It seemed funny at the time, but I cannot imagine what kind of hell would have broken loose if Wally had broken a leg. The flight surgeons had always been a real nuisance, constantly nit-picking and keeping tabs on their maverick patients. You take one out and get him injured, and you’re in deep trouble.

Handball was very popular with the astronauts and they used the courts in the O&C building on a regular basis. Wally and Dick Gordon had an ongoing battle, always trying to see who was the best. Once when I was over there, egging them on, Dick turned to me glowering.

“Alright Mr. Smart Guy! 1 could whip you sitting on the floor.”

I sure couldn’t let that go unanswered. I accepted the challenge and was soon in a vicious game with Gordon scooting around on the floor on his bottom. I would whack the ball anywhere in the court. It didn’t matter. There he would be, bottom in contact with the floor, and returning the ball at some angle I could not get to. He whipped me good.

The doctors were constantly asking for specimens from the astronauts. Sample of this, sample of that. Wally got fed up with it all one day and filled a five gallon water bottle with watered down tea. He added a little detergent to it and shook it up to get just the right amount of froth. He stuck on a “Fragile -Handle With Care” sticker and a card that said “Wally’s Urine Specimen” and planted it on nurse Dee O’Hara’s desk. “There, that ought to hold them for a while.” These poor guys. In a way I really felt sorry for them. They worked incredibly long hours and rarely had a free moment. They could barely sneak out to a restaurant or a movie without being accosted by reporters or autograph seekers. We always had an unwritten rule about the time we spent together “after hours.” No autographs, no interviews, and no outsiders. It was the only time these men ever had to catch their breath and I protected their privacy vigorously.

As the Apollo program once again picked up steam, a new round of scheduling pressures started to appear. With the large number of systems, worked on by an enormous number of people, coordination was a nightmare for everyone. A testing delay in one critical component could bring a halt to a long line of scheduled tasks, effecting thousands of people. No one wanted to be the one responsible for such an interruption.

With incentive packages based on timely performance and the desire to stay on the gravy train, every contractor was concerned that his company not be identified as a bottleneck. It developed into a confusing game of cat and mouse. Contractor A would realize that he was falling behind schedule. Seeing that Contractor B ahead of him was having some sort of trouble, Contractor A would begin to stall. He hoped if he could fake it long enough, Contractor B would cause the schedule slippage that he needed to hide his own failure. What this meant is that you frequently couldn’t get a straight story on what was going on. They would tell you anything to avoid being discovered. I suppose you have to expect that on a project of this magnitude, but this “cover your ass” mentality always made me grind my teeth.

Schedule delays are simply a way of life in large technical projects. Now sometimes contractors would promise timetables they could not keep just to win the contract. But more often, delays and slippages were simply the result of inexact science. So many variables involved, and so many unknown factors.

Imagine that you are planning an exotic family vacation a number of months in advance. A cruise on a luxurious ocean liner to the beautiful islands of the Caribbean. First of all, everyone selects the clothing they will take. You have to prepare for dining, swimming, lounging on the deck, and excursions at your destination. As you get closer to your departure date, you discover that the number of suitcases required exceeds the storage capacity of the cabins. Modifications and compromises have to be made. Having, you believe, solved that problem, you next plan the logistics of getting your family from your home to the ship’s dock. You hope you haven’t overlooked some paperwork somewhere.

The ship will depart at a specific time. That is your window. If you miss it, you don’t go. So you carefully compute the time in reverse, allowing for all the things required from the time you wake up until the time you and your family walk up the gangplank. What if you have an electrical outage in the middle of the night and your alarm clock fails to go off? What if you have a flat tire on your trip to the docks? Anything that goes wrong in that critical path of events will either pressure the remaining events to speed up, or will cause you to miss the boat. Accurate planning on a small level like this is difficult. On the level of a project like Apollo, it is impossible.

As the months went by and we began getting closer to launch, Wally Schirra started to change. The “Jolly Wally” we had always known was replaced by a man with high expectations and a relatively short fuse. Although he had not yet announced it to NASA management, I suspect he had already decided this would be his last mission.

Apollo 7 was scheduled to be an earth orbital flight, lasting ten days. That number was not arbitrary. It was roughly the length of time that a lunar mission would last. This was to be the shakeout cruise for Apollo. Although there would be no Lunar Module on the flight, this trial run would prove - or disprove - the space-worthiness of the new Block II command module.

Wally was never one to put up with a lot of politics and BS. But now, in the aftermath of the fire and with his subsequent role as commander of the first manned Apollo flight, his tolerance level was even lower. Problems during tests, or equipment being late in arriving would trigger harsh outbursts from him during debriefings. I would be being kind if I said people referred to him as a “pain in the neck.” He collected a variety of unflattering names and references. Co-workers, knowing that I was a good friend of his, sometimes asked me to intervene, but there was really little that I could do. I knew that most of the time he was right. It was just the way he chose to say it that got people upset. And things just didn’t work like they had during the old days.

The astronauts spent a lot of time at the plants while their spacecraft were manufactured. During Mercury and Gemini, if an astronaut wanted something changed, he just called up Mr. Mac and it got done. But with the complexity of Apollo, it could not be handled like that anymore. There were too many interfaces and relationships.

At the home plant in Downey, the line engineers and technicians still looked at the astronauts like gods. But anytime an astronaut wanted some change, he found himself in a frustrating maze of bureaucratic red tape. Wally seemed to accept that part, fully aware of the constraints of the project. But if someone told him that “we fixed that,” he certainly expected it to be done. He was perfectly capable of chewing a supervisor to pieces and didn’t care at all who he ticked off in the process.

One vestige of Apollo 1 that would not be corrected in time for Apollo 7 was the set of crew couches. Wally, Donn, and Walt would fly their shiny new Block II CM into space with Block I couches. This was a major problem and Wally harped on it incessantly. The Block I couches were not designed to absorb the same amount of energy that the later couches promised to handle. It would not be any real issue as long as the CM came down in water. But they would not give adequate protection during a parachute landing on land. If there was an abort on the pad or shortly after launch, winds blowing inland could spell “serious injury or death” to the astronauts. The only way around the problem was to establish an additional mission rule requiring favorable winds prior to launch.

Prior to mating the spacecraft to the booster, we had to complete a series of altitude chamber tests. On July 23, 1968, we conducted the unmanned run followed by the test with the prime crew aboard on the 26th. For nine hours, the suited crew conducted orbital simulations inside the spacecraft which was pressurized with 65% oxygen and 35% nitrogen. Two days later, the backup crewmen were in for their own tests.

In early August, the Apollo 7 spacecraft was mated to the Saturn IB booster out at Pad 34. In September we ran two critical checkouts: the Countdown Demonstration Test and the Flight Readiness Review. The Countdown Demonstration Test, or CDDT, is one of the most important tests ran at the pad. The final portion of the five and a half day launch countdown is started at the T minus one day mark. The astronauts in their spacesuits are loaded into the spacecraft and the hatch is closed. With everyone in place as they would be on an actual launch, the countdown proceeds through all its phases, right down to T-10 seconds. It is then terminated since we obviously don’t want to start up the booster sequencing.

The end of September also marked another milestone. Wally Schirra officially announced his retirement from NASA, effective July 1, 1969. He planned a special celebration at splashdown to commemorate the event.

Wally approached me with the idea of smuggling a small bottle of scotch on board. This was certainly something that management would not condone so we would have to treat it with the utmost secrecy. It was also something that could get me fired, so I was very concerned that it be handled properly. I started by running the bottle through an altitude test. This was nothing formal, of course. I just hid it in the altitude chamber during some other routine tests. Next I wrapped the bottle in Beta cloth, a new fireproof material they used in the spacesuits, and made my decision on where to stow it. With the help of an unnamed astronaut, the contraband was slipped aboard a few days before the launch date.

In the early morning hours of October 11, 1968, John Young completed the preflight checkout of the Apollo 7 spacecraft. Joe Schmitt had been there earlier doing triple checks on every hose and restraint that would be connected to the crew members. At two and a half hours prior to launch, the complete closeout crew was in place and inserted the three astronauts into the Command Module. Right after hatch closure and anticipating my smiling face in the window, Wally was on the communications loop:

“The next face you will see on your television screen will be that of Guenter Wendt.”

I chuckled and replied, “The next face you fellows see better be that of a frogman, or you’re in trouble!”

A long series of checklists kept everyone busy for the next couple of hours. Finally, with everything done, the order to clear the structure was given. We departed for the fallback area, leaving the three astronauts alone on Pad 34. As the gantry rolled back, Donn Eisele watched the white room disappear from view in the small hatch window. In probably the most famous quote of his life, he questioned in his best German accent, “I vonder vere Guenter vent?” The crew howled and Wally added it to his permanent list of jokes.

Right on schedule, the engines of Apollo 7 roared to life and the three-man crew lofted into the clear autumn sky. The fiery plume was brilliant and the ground rumbled under our feet.

With the exception of bickering back and forth between the crew and flight controllers, the ten day mission was a great success. The crew demonstrated the maneuvering that would later be required for lunar module extraction and produced some dramatic inflight video that introduced the world to life on orbit. The Apollo spacecraft exceeded all expectations and proved that she was ready for a trip to the moon. At splashdown, Wally broke out his tiny bottle of scotch and toasted himself on his achievements. During his post-flight physical, the medics had no explanation for the traces of alcohol that showed up in his blood.