Chilling final words astronaut said before spaceship exploded killing 3 inside
Half a century ago, a fire swept through a NASA spacecraft during a launch rehearsal test, killing three astronauts trapped inside.
The haunting last words of a would-be astronaut set alight by an uncontrollable blaze have lived on, along with his failed mission which would set the scene for Neil Armstrong’s walk on the Moon. The Launch Complex 34, a fragile NASA spacecraft was widely accepted as unlikely to ever make its way back to earth. On Friday 27 January 1967, a lethal blaze would incinerate three Americans before they could even leave Earth’s atmosphere.
The three deceased, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died inside the Block 1’ spacecraft, intended only for Earth-orbital tests. Their last words shattered onlookers, and those listening into the launch. NASA mandated that the Apollo capsule should have had a pure oxygen atmosphere, meaning the craft had the perfect conditions to encourage uncontrollable fires.
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The Apollo 1 prime crew would make up the team for the first manned Apollo space flight (Heritage Space/Heritage Images via Getty Images)As the inevitable fire broke out, Roger Chaffee shouted: “Fire!” We’ve got a fire in the cockpit. Let’s get out. We’re burning up.” It was later discovered the fire had broken out beneath their feet, before a surge of oxygen filled their suits.
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However, they could not get out due to a fatal, inward opening, bolted hatch which required screws to be loosend to get out. Before the team boarded the ship, a fellow astronaut, Wally Schirra, pulled Gus Grissom aside and uttered some crucial words of warning, after ascertaining the ship was a death-trap. Schirra told Grissom: “If you get the slightest glitch, get outta there. I don’t like it.” “At such pressure, and bathed by pure oxygen,” wrote Grissom’s biographer, Ray Boomhower, “a cigarette could be reduced to ashes in seconds.”
The practice module was wrecked by fire at Cape Kennedy, Florida (Getty Images)During simulations, it took the astronauts over two minutes to open the hatch. In these circumstances, they did not have that long. After the fire broke out due to bare wires in the oxygen rich atmosphere, the space-bound men’s bio-medical readings soared, alight with alarm bells. Other sensors detected a brief power surge, before Chaffee announced the fire. Chaffee’s fellow team-mate Propst only had time to loosen first bolt. The attempted rescue mission was barred by raging flames and heat in what their team leader, Don Babbitt, later called “a heavy thick grey smoke, very billowing, but very thick.”
The flame-fuelling polyurethane panels fed the fire and rescuers could not move for smoke inhalation, and were later treated for their injuries. However, it is maintained that the chaos lay the tragic foundations for the Appollo missions thatw ould reach space, and would ultimately see Armstrong take man’s first steps on the moon. Without Grissom, White, and Chaffee’s deaths, it is unlikely NASA would have mobilised itself to win the space race and reach the moon.
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