Walt and I got involved in the post-fire investigation. Wally copped out—in retrospect, a wise move. The first thing we had to do was listen to voice tapes and try to identify who said what in the spacecraft when the fire broke out. Did you ever listen to your friends scream in panic, then agony, as they fry to death? Listen to it over and over and over again? I don’t know why we did it—I guess it seemed terribly important at the time to find out who said what.
Then I spent some time in the spacecraft cabin—what was left of it—trying to help the fire experts identify bits and pieces of charred and melted material. The acrid smell of burned plastic, paint, and nylon was overpowering. There were little piles of debris all over the floor and the crew couches. The side walls and the instrument panels were charred, discolored, and warped from the heat. The mess in the cabin and the screaming on the voice tapes gave me nightmares at first. But after a while the dreams went away, along with the knot in my stomach.
At first we didn’t know what would happen to the three of us, personally, or to the program. But plans soon jelled, and everything fell into place. The Apollo program would continue, but the first flight would be delayed at least a year in order to make changes in the spacecraft that were necessary to make it safe from fire and better equipped for moon flights. And Wally, Walt, and I were asked to make the first flight.
One day Slayton came up to us in the hall at Kennedy Space Center and told us we were to fly the first Apollo if we wanted it. We said, “Hell, yes, we want it!” But we were determined to have a good spacecraft this time around, not another bucket of bolts like Gus, Ed, and Roger’s. Our confidence was shot but we knew it would come back if NASA and North American Aviation could show us a good spacecraft.
The real tragedy of the 204 fire was that it was so preventable, so unnecessary—almost criminal, in fact. The incredibly incompetent management, which, in my opinion, led to the fire, arose out of George Mueller’s naive stupidity and Joe Shea’s colossal ego. Mueller was Manned Spaceflight chief at NASA headquarters, and Shea was Apollo manager at NASA in Houston. Mueller would dictate some impossible schedules for spacecraft delivery, checkout, and launch. Shea was vain enough to think he could meet them. And the contractors were dishonest or equally stupid, or both, for not telling NASA they couldn’t hack it.
Two years before the fire, a number of astronauts and engineers petitioned Shea to approve a simple, one-piece, outward-opening hatch design in place of the awkward two-piece hatch panel we had then. Not only was it cumbersome to handle, it sealed from the inside of the cabin, which meant that any slight overpressure in the cabin—like in a fire—would plaster it against its seals so hard you couldn’t pull it loose with elephants. I remember looking at Ed White’s finger scrapings in the melted goo on the inner hatch surface. He must have pawed frantically, trying to get the hatch open, just seconds before he expired from searing hot gases that suffocated him and burned out his lungs.
Shea turned us down. “Too much money and not enough time,” he said. “It’s a ‘crew comfort’ item. You guys are just too lazy to wrestle with the hatch we’ve got. What the hell, it works, doesn’t it?” It’s ironic that the first major change made to the spacecraft after the Apollo 1 fire was the simple, one-piece hatch we had asked for two years earlier. And you should have seen the North American weenies. They crowed about the “new” hatch until one would think they had invented the wheel.
I really believe Joe Shea thought we were sandbagging about the hatch. He seemed to have a peculiarly contemptuous suspicion of astronauts, anyway. How could dumb-ass pilots know anything? Most of them didn’t even have PhDs! I think he was also secretly envious. He was ambitious, aggressive, and competitive. He could be devastatingly sarcastic: yet his humor was warm and witty and he could be a most charming fellow on occasion. Joe tried to beat us at everything—handball, running, cracking puns, arm wrestling, even flying our own simulators. He didn’t do badly for a beginner. Joe was a good manager except for one fatal fault: he let his ego interfere with his good judgment.
In the ensuing weeks there was some finger-pointing, but surprisingly little considering the circumstances. The North American guys told what a great company they were and what a terrific job they had done on Apollo but allowed as how they might be able to spruce up a bit on management control and test discipline. The NASA guys—the investigating board and others—were pretty honestly critical of themselves and the contractor. Jim Webb, the administrator for NASA, stood up and took the brunt of it before Congress. Wily, weaselly little George Mueller sat tight, didn’t say a word, and came through unscathed—at least for the time being. Joe Shea became the scapegoat and got canned.
After that, things got better. The contractor—principally North American—and NASA managements became more open and honest with each other, the spacecraft was redesigned (we got the one-piece hatch and a great many other improvements that were sorely needed), and people started telling George Mueller what they could do and when they could get it done, instead of the other way around as it had been before the fire.
For the next several months we worked with the engineers and mechanics who were building our spacecraft, Number 101, at the plant in California. Our confidence was shot at first on account of the fire, but it gradually returned when we saw what a fine job they were doing. Because of all the spacecraft changes (which had to be done, really, if we were going to fly one of those things to the moon) we had to spend a lot of time at the North American plant in Downey, California, conferring with their designers and engineers and taking part in all the checkout and testing that had to go on before the craft could be sent to Florida. That helped us learn a lot about the spacecraft and gain more confidence in it, the people who built it and checked it out, and those who were helping us prepare for the flight. In fact, we never did turn loose of the testing altogether and concentrate only on training.
It all paid off. But it really got to be a drag sometimes. We’d sit around all week waiting for a test to start. Then just as we got ready to leave for Houston for the weekend, they’d run it. In retrospect we weren’t very efficient in managing our own time—it’s hard to get much training done when you’re hanging fire for a test to start. But the simulators weren’t up to speed for us to train on them yet, and I guess we learned as much about the spacecraft by working on it as we would have in a classroom. And then we knew it would be a long time to launch date, anyway. The whole crew, prime, backup, and support, used to sit around and make bets on test startup dates and times, delivery date and launch date. Ed Givens won the launch date pool, but didn’t live to collect. He was killed in a car accident in 1967.
We were determined to follow the spacecraft every step of the way, from the day we were assigned to it until the day we flew it. Our confidence was shattered at first by the fire and we knew the only way to get it back was to watch each step in the design-build-test cycle to be sure it got done right. And to raise hell if it wasn’t. As it turned out we didn’t have to do too much yelling.
One thing that raised our hopes was a guy named John Healey. When North American reshuffled their management they brought in a lot of new people, including Healey, who became spacecraft manager for our ship. By job charter and force of personality, Healey wielded a pretty big stick around there. What North American needed desperately was someone to really be in charge for a change. And if there was ever anybody in charge of anything, it would have to be John Healey. He was magnificent. After an initial period of mutual skepticism, our crew and Healey developed a working rapport and close friendship that endured through the years, long after we left NASA.
We played some pretty neat tricks after-hours in LA. There was always a gathering of engineers, PR guys, and secretaries at the bar at the Tahitian Village Motel, the Dixie Belle restaurant, and the Sandpiper bar in Downey. These convivial assemblies were always good for a few laughs, a few drinks, and dinner on either the proprietors or the North American PR guys, and an occasional lay. With one or two notable exceptions, we didn’t fool around much with the North American girls. One that comes to mind was the incident where one of our guys got a North American girl pregnant. The company very suavely sent her off to have an abortion, all expenses paid.
One other time, three or four of us went to Las Vegas overnight from LA along with a couple of PR types and three or four local beauties from Downey. We went in the company airplane. The guy in charge wanted to induct Frank Sinatra into a fighter pilots’ organization that he was busy founding. Now, Sinatra never flew a plane in his life, as far as I know, but according to our host, Frank had something called “the fighter pilot spirit,” whatever the hell that is. Sinatra wasn’t even there, as it turned out, but nobody really cared. I guess we were along because our host needed a few astronaut bodies to lend awe and dignity to the occasion. We were also a great excuse for the PR guys to go out and whoop it up on company funds.
After a while we began to fan out away from Downey, heading south to Newport and Long Beach, then swinging west and north around the coast through Palos Verdes, the west beaches, and up to Santa Monica. We covered a lot of ground, including Hollywood and the Hills of Beverly. There was gold in them thar hills.
We had some great times and met some very groovy people—movie stars, entertainers, and big shots in showbiz. We met some real losers, too. Most of these were guys and girls attracted to astronauts like flies. Most seemed to be four-flushers and penny-ante businessmen who fawned on them. There was the golden young swinging Hollywood lawyer who got three years in jail for stealing objects of art from his friends’ and clients’ homes. I guess he needed the money to support himself and his friends in the style to which he would have liked to become accustomed.
We used to have some great times on comedian Bill Dana’s boat. We didn’t go anywhere in it—I’m not sure Billy knew how to operate it. But it made a great place for a party or a quiet afternoon. Then there were the broads. There must be at least ten million sexy good-looking women in Southern California. We were accused of trying to get around to all of them. I don’t think we did.
The spacecraft finally got rebuilt and tested and shipped to Cape Kennedy via the Aero Spacelines pregnant guppy, a large bulbous airplane capable of carrying Saturn rocket stages. The whole plant went bananas on delivery day. They lived and breathed schedules, and it was a point of pride with Healey and the others that it should go on schedule. I don’t know why they were so frantic that day. I guess it was an emotional response en masse to their collective anxieties over shipping on time. I think it was also an outlet for their immense relief, their satisfaction, and their utter glee at having finally after all those years completed the first manned Apollo spacecraft.
During those last few months the spacecraft was at Downey, the tempo of our activity picked up. There were the usual day-to-day technical problems that somehow became more critical and demanded more of our attention as delivery date approached. We spent more time in the spacecraft running the integrated systems tests. And our training simulators in Houston and Florida began to support us more predictably. Budgeting our time among the three locations became a problem. We wanted to take advantage of the training opportunities, yet we still wanted to keep close tabs on the progress of our spacecraft. It seems we spent an inordinate amount of time just flying back and forth across the continent. Twelve- and fourteen-hour workdays became routine.
We had plenty of help, of course. There was the backup crew, plus three other astronauts who made up our astronaut support crew. And we had a flight crew support team of about a dozen engineers that took care of an awful lot of details for us. But there are a lot of things you just can’t or don’t want to delegate. This was to be the first spacecraft of a new and unproven design. And, coming on the heels of the fire, we knew the fate and future of the entire manned space program—not to mention our own skins—was riding on the success or failure of Apollo 7.
Looking back, it seems we could have been more efficient. Part of the problem was Wally. He was a great inspirational leader. But he was terribly disorganized personally and really didn’t have much talent for management. Yet he would delegate hardly any of his authority—which, as spacecraft crew commander and just because he was Wally Schirra, was considerable. He insisted on making nearly all the decisions.
Most of the time he wouldn’t even let Walt or me confer with the program managers unless we cleared it with him first. Wally always said he “didn’t want to get bogged down in details.” I think this was a cop-out to cover the fact that he was in over his head, and couldn’t comprehend or assimilate the complexities of the Apollo spacecraft design. He left the detailed knowledge of operating the spacecraft to Walt and me. That left him free to think big and philosophize and to big-deal it with the higher echelons of management and other persons of prominence. On those rare occasions when he did allow himself to delve into details, he got hung up on dead issues or else he would go off on tangents and never resolve the issues at hand.
It was difficult to get Wally into the simulator, and if he did get in to keep him there. Without realizing it he let everything else take priority. He was forever responding to telephone calls on matters largely irrelevant to the preparations and training for Apollo 7. Or he would get into meandering long-winded bull sessions of little consequence. And before every simulator session he would insist on a briefing by the instructors. We often spent more time in the briefings than we did in the simulator itself.
On most flight crews the commander is simply a leader chosen from among peers. Wally saw his role a little differently. He was the captain of a ship and Walt and I were the crew. He had absolute authority. I was the ship’s navigator on the bridge and sometime-executive officer. Walt was the crew in the engine compartment.
Another of Wally’s preoccupations was his role and position vis-à-vis the flight directors, program managers, and other flight crew commanders. He concerned himself greatly with his image as an authority figure and the pomp and protocol of his position and military rank. He was very jealous of his prerogatives in an environment where they tended largely to get lost in the general tenor of informality and casual camaraderie.
Wally was very much concerned with form and appearances, or “showmanship” as he chose to call it. To him it was more important to look good than to be good. Whenever he possibly could he staged things to cast the most favorable light on Wally Schirra, regardless of whether it was in the best interests of the mission or what effects it had on someone else.
In short, Wally’s leadership left much to be desired. When he kept a tight grip on the reins his direction was erratic, ambiguous, and arbitrary, and sometimes when we really needed a decision his direction was nonexistent. Nevertheless, he had great charisma and an indomitable sense of humor. And when the chips were really down he would hang in there with the rest of us—usually.
When the spacecraft went to Florida, we bade a fond farewell to our friends and lovers in LA and moved our flight crew operation to Florida also. We continued to spend some time in Houston for flight planning and other technical meetings, but the bulk of our activity took place at Cape Kennedy. We didn’t get away from Florida very much because there was always some test or training exercise going on at the weekends. We were also swinging pretty good around Cocoa Beach.
Cocoa Beach and its vicinity happened to be the world’s greatest astronaut fan club. Every move we made was chronicled and heralded by an instant-response grapevine net that covered and enmeshed the denizens of North Brevard County. Most of the folks there seemed to hold us in utmost awe, esteem, and affection and took keen interest in our affairs—romantic and otherwise. Their interest was understandable, since we were the hero-images of the space program on which many of them depended for their livelihood. Indeed, North Brevard fed and grew on governmental largesse through the expansion and flourishing of the space program at Kennedy Space Center for fifteen years—that is, until the bottom fell out.
I’m sure it is no surprise to anyone that among the residents there were a large number of attractive young ladies whose habit was to express their adulation of astronauts by sleeping with them. A good many were secretaries who were caught up in astro-hysteria at the Cape and at contractor offices in Cocoa Beach and the town of Cape Canaveral. Others were little chippies who worked as waitresses, telephone operators, and desk clerks around town. A few were young wives who were bored with their marriages and spent their evenings sitting around in the local bars, especially when astronauts were in town.
For the astronauts who played the game—and that included about three-fourths of those who had flown plus a great many others—these dalliances presented some rather interesting and unusual social situations. They practically lived in Cocoa Beach, their wives were in Houston, they had strong sexual compulsions, and enticing, eager females were readily available. They lived in constant dread of exposure because they believed it would be the ruination of their astronaut careers. Yet the fishbowl aspects of their existence in Florida almost guaranteed that their clandestine romantic romps would not go unnoticed. About the best they could hope for is that if they were properly circumspect and unobtrusive, the word wouldn’t spread too far beyond Cocoa and, most important, wouldn’t find its way into the newspapers.
The guys and their various girlfriends tended to congregate in a clandestine microcosm of society all their own. There were parties, dinners, beach romps, picnics, and weekend trips that were always held in seclusion and conducted in a vaguely furtive manner. Sometimes two or three couples got together in one of the guy’s motel rooms for a few drinks and laughs, or on occasion for dining on fare from one of the local fast-food carry-out restaurants. Sometimes these little social affairs took place at someone’s private home or apartment. But they rarely, if ever, took place in a public restaurant or nightspot. This had the added advantage of economy: a bottle of booze and a box of chicken were cheaper than drinks and dinner at a nice restaurant. Some of the worst rakes in the office were also the biggest tightwads.
Despite the abundance of available females locally, astronauts had been known to import girls from as far away as California. It must have taxed their ingenuity to keep the girls for days on end, and keep them happy, without spending a fortune or setting foot in public with them. One thing the guys had going for them was free—or nearly free—motel rooms. There were two motels at the Cape that catered to astronauts. The higher-priced one charged $1.50 a night, or $5 when guys had their wives along, which was rare. Girlfriends were not formally acknowledged and could stay with the guys for free. The other motel charged a dollar.
On a typical day the guys left for work about 7:30 a.m. and had breakfast and lunch in the crew quarters dining room, or sandwiches brought from the kitchen over to the simulator building. This left their lady guests to their own devices—and expenses—until the men returned late in the afternoon. For dinner they ate in the room on delicacies from the gourmet menu of Kentucky Fried or Fat Boy Bar-B-Q. Or they threw caution to the winds and drove fifty miles to a restaurant in Orlando or Vero Beach or Daytona and hoped no one saw them. For entertainment they might venture a drive-in movie, but more likely watched television and bedded down early. Infrequently they might wander into one of the local pubs with their ladies for a nightcap and a little dancing—but only in the late evening of a day early in a week comfortably distant from a launch date and after ascertaining that no newsmen or important visitors from Houston or Washington were in town. As far as I can see, all that the girls got out of this was the distinction of getting laid by an astronaut. And after all the years of all those astronauts running loose from one end of the country to the other, that wasn’t much of a distinction.
It’s curious how astronauts’ sociosexual activities tended to run in tight little loops. They seemed to plow the same ground over and over. It could be quite ego-shattering for a guy to discover that his current flame had made it previously with one or more of his cohorts. In fact, he may find out that she was currently dallying with others of the group. However, the psychic trauma was usually minimal since the emotional involvement was normally nil. Once he got over the initial shock, the situation could be pretty funny. One astro-wag coined the term “Peters-in-law” to describe the quasi-incestuous circumstance where two or more astronauts had shared or were sharing the same woman. These adulterous activities ranged from one-night stands with strangers to deep involvements and serious love affairs over prolonged periods of months or even years. The latter were continuous—or intermittent.
Most astronauts’ nocturnal enterprises lay somewhere between these two extremes. They tended to have casual intermittent affairs, perhaps several going on concurrently. No doubt their myriad female partners played the same game. This arrangement provided them with liberal amounts of sex of a great and fascinating variety. It also kept them off the streets and thus out of public scrutiny. And more to the point, it prevented them from wandering around until all hours, losing sleep and winding up empty-handed. Their polygamous behavior also tended to inhibit the formation of close entanglements with all the attendant complications, heartaches, and lingering aftermath. Nonetheless, serious relationships did evolve from time to time.
Naturally, some astronauts were more susceptible than others. One or two seemed to be in love continually with some broad or other. These affairs of course were more like adolescent infatuations—intense, erotic, but short-lived. Some guys had two or three really serious affairs that broke up in agony only when the guy’s work took him elsewhere and circumstances precluded any further visits to his beloved. One of the troops had been going with the same girl for seven years, last I counted. He moved her all over the country so he could be with her. St. Louis, California, Florida—it must have been a hell of a life for both of them. He had a miserable marriage and two nice kids in Houston. I guess he was afraid to leave his wife for his girlfriend because it might have meant losing his position as one of the perennial space flyers. So he never told his wife and she pretended not to know—although everyone else did. Meanwhile, he kept his girlfriend hidden away. She found a little relief by having an occasional date or perhaps a brief affair with some other man.
We tried to spend weekends in Houston, but as launch day drew nearer we spent less and less time there, including weekends. We got busy as hell, trying to keep up with the work on the spacecraft. We were still a little skeptical and were dealing with an entirely new (to us) team of managers, engineers, and technicians, both contractor and NASA. Our training also intensified. We did a lot of work in our pressure suits, a time-consuming and sometimes fatiguing procedure. Then there was a succession of “flight sims,” exercises where the spacecraft simulators in Florida were actually wired in to the Mission Control Center in Houston. The realism was incredible. You think for all the world that you’re flying in space and talking with the controllers on the ground. It was just as real for them, too. Everything happened in “real time”—that is, in the same sequence and over the same time intervals that would occur during the actual flight.
I remember the way our rocket looked a couple of nights before launch. They had pulled back all the gantry structure and I could see it standing there, naked and stark white, bathed in the brilliance of high-intensity spotlights against a carbon black sky. And on top, the little white cone we would ride inside to orbit and inhabit for eleven long days. Some sight. I got goose bumps and “go fever” right then.