On January 27, 1967, during the tests of the Apollo 1 spacecraft, a fire broke out. Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee became its victims. They burned to death. For a long time they were considered accident victims. However, Virgil Grissom's son collected evidence proving that a premeditated murder took place that day …
… US Air Force Colonel Virgil Grissom, at that time America's most honored astronaut, was preparing to fly to the moon. He has already had two space flights: a suborbital flight on Mercury in July 1961 and an orbital flight on Gemini 3 in March 1965. A year later, he celebrated his 40th birthday. Glory awaited him ahead of him … But he found death. “He was killed,” says Scott Grissom, the astronaut's son, today.
Official version: On January 27, 1967, during the tests of the Apollo 1 spacecraft, a fire broke out at Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral). The entire crew of the ship was killed.
“It was not an accident. This was deliberate sabotage. I don’t know if there was one person or there were 50 of them, but this is exactly the case,”says Scott Grissom.
So, let's try to restore the events of that tragic day. Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were preparing for a two-week orbital flight on the Apollo 1 spacecraft. Then they were to become members of the first lunar expedition. “I'm incredibly happy,” said Lieutenant Colonel Edward White, a member of the Gemini 4, on one of the last days of January 1967. "Now I'm sure I'll be walking on the moon soon."
On that day, January 27, 1967, a dress rehearsal for the upcoming flight was held. The Apollo 1 ship was docked to the Saturn launch vehicle. Astronauts were to board the ship in full gear. Then all electrical systems and communications will be turned on. Disconnect the cables connecting the ship to Earth. Everything will be ready for autonomous flight. NASA calls such tests a plugs-out test. They are generally expected to run smoothly, which means the ship is ready to go into space. However, things went wrong from the start that day.
At 11 am, the astronauts were supposed to climb the ladder and take their seats aboard the ship. But technical failures began. The crew was detained for two hours. When Grissom finally stepped into the ship, he was alarmed by some sour smell coming from there. Instead of the last countdown - this sacramental "Ten, nine, eight, seven …" - there is another break. Air samples are taken. Long, unpleasant. The result is zero.
And yet the tests continue. The next step is plugs-out test, but preparation for it again fails. For some reason, interruptions in communication: it is heard, then it is not heard. “Sometimes we didn’t understand what the crew was saying,” the test chief, Clarence Chovin, later admitted. Finally, the voice of the commander breaks through: "Are we going to talk to you on the moon when here, five meters from each other, we don't hear anything?" Grissom is clearly angry. He leaned out of the ship's window and, in spite of the assembled journalists, shouted: "To be honest, I think that this ship has almost no chance of flying off its two weeks."
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Grissom was not afraid to cut the truth. He was a hero in American astronautics. No one in the US has spent as many hours in space as he has. His popularity in the country was comparable only to the glory of Gagarin in the Soviet Union. In the meantime, Grissom was preparing to challenge the Soviet cosmonaut. He was the first to go into space - he is the first to set foot on the moon. True, it was still necessary to fly there. Grissom literally freaked out: he found fault with every wiring on the ship, examining it centimeter by centimeter. His captiousness stuck in the livers, probably, of all the technicians who prepared the ship for flight. And every time he found some kind of malfunction.
“In the last year, I have literally been like one crying in the wilderness,” he complained. In fact, a desert formed around him that last year. Few knew how lonely he was. It’s hard to imagine, but the "chief astronaut of America" began to receive anonymous threats. Someone promised to kill him. “This unknown had to be sought among people who were somehow involved in the US space program,” Grissom's relatives are sure. A guard had to be assigned to the astronaut. “If the first serious accident occurs in our space program,” he once said in a conversation with his wife, “then I will suffer.”
Grissom was already in serious trouble. On July 21, 1961, at the end of the suborbital flight, the Mercury spacecraft landed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Grissom froze, waiting for the helicopter. A hatch suddenly opened. The ship instantly began to fill with water. The astronaut climbed out and jumped into the sea. He was shaken by the waves, he waved his arms, trying to give at least some kind of signal to the two helicopters loitering not far away. All in vain! Having completed the task, he sank after the ship literally in front of the rescuers who were looking somewhere to the side. Only the pilot of the third helicopter, suddenly appearing above the horizon, noticed the drowning astronaut. Grissom was dragged aboard the helicopter literally at the last second, when his strength was already exhausted. The cause of the hatch malfunction has not been found out …
… Colonel Grissom has made many enemies for himself. Well, that was his character - he was tempted to ask for trouble. He was a harsh man, unrestrained, but fair. Yes, and everything that day went awry from the very morning, so other specialists began to shake their heads, albeit not swearing in vain. Something went wrong, something went wrong! Some even suggested interrupting the tests. What's the use of "rehearsing" when everything needs to be redone? However, they did not listen. “Time is running out,” they later justified themselves. "And so we lost the day." Moroku decided to continue with the tests.
If only the connection junked or the contact jammed! The door is already closing: everything starts all over again, but this time they will go to the end. Fastened to chairs, cut off from the outside world, the astronauts freeze on a powder keg - all that remains is to bring a match …
In the ships that participated in the NASA space program in those years, an atmosphere was created from pure oxygen. It was believed that there was no great danger in this. In space - not on Earth! First, if something caught fire, the astronauts could bleed all the air from the cabin of the ship - then the fire would go out by itself. Secondly, the gaseous products of combustion in zero gravity envelop the fire and extinguish the flame.
However, Apollo 1 was still on Earth. And a huge amount of oxygen was pumped into it. If in the cabins of the Gemini and Mercury spacecraft the oxygen pressure was 0.3 atmospheres, then on that January day in the Apollo 1 cabin it exceeded the atmosphere. In such conditions, a fire could start from any spark.
For several hours already Grissom, White and Chaffee flicked switches, pressed buttons. And for several hours it was known that there were some defects in the ship's electrical system. This was indicated at least by interruptions in communication. However, in spite of everything, the most dangerous experiment was scheduled for 18.30 …
The plugs-out test started at 18.30. The semi-debugged ship imitated the launch. All communication with the cosmodrome was terminated. All autonomous power supply systems were turned on. "…Contact? There is a contact! " The last maneuver has begun. What do the monitors in the Flight Control Center show? Is there a heating of the onboard batteries? Can not be! Why? Short circuit?
It was no longer possible to interfere with the autonomous "flight". At 18.31.03 Roger Chaffee reported: "There is fire on the ship." At that moment, Edward White's pulse - he alone was connected to a heart rate monitor - jumped sharply.
18.31.04. The instruments recorded convulsive movements in the ship's cockpit.
18.31.05. The temperature in the ship's cockpit rises.
18.31.09. White sounds an alarm. The pressure in the ship's cockpit is building up. The instruments record even more convulsive movements of the astronauts.
18.31.12. The temperature rises sharply. Chaffee reports a high fire. Several technicians standing nearby hear cries for help from the cockpit.
18.31.17. The pressure in the cockpit reaches its maximum. An explosion is heard. The cabin wall breaks out. When a few minutes later the first daredevils made their way to the astronauts, they were all dead …
This is the course of events, restored during an investigation by a special commission created by the NASA space agency. Six of the eight members of the commission represented this department itself (any motorist, probably, would also be happy to conduct an investigation of the accident in which he got himself, and not trust this case to some arbitrators who remember the stopping distance or the amount of alcohol in the blood). Congressmen criticized the composition of the commission, but to no avail. No independent examination was carried out. As a result of the commission's work, NASA Deputy Head Robert Seamans said that the events that happened were "the result of a tragic coincidence of circumstances that could not have been foreseen."
Impossible? Long before this accident, the Americans had already carried out a number of experiments with an oxygen atmosphere. Their results were extremely unfavorable. In the period from 1962 to 1967, similar experiments have repeatedly ended in disaster. So, just four weeks before the death of Grissom and his comrades, on January 1, 1967, two testers died at the US Air Force base in San Antonio during a fire in an oxygen chamber (pressure - 0.5 atmosphere).
No one will ever explain why NASA leaders, oblivious to past failures, persisted in their deadly experiments. Was the desire to catch up and overtake the Soviet Union in the field of cosmonautics so strong that the creators of the "lunar program" did not want to reckon with any sacrifices?
We can only guess about a lot - after all, most of the documents related to that old accident have not yet been declassified. The cause of the accident remained unknown …
Nikolay Nikolaevich Nepomniachtchi