Page 83 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

out with updated designs. Additionally, a new design of the door (hatch) to the module was installed
just prior to the simulation. The new hatch design opened inward instead of outward. In a fire, the
pressure increase inside the module would render it impossible to open a hatch that opened inward.
The replaced hatch also lacked explosive bolts which would have allowed for an immediate egress.

In the book Mission to the Moon, authors Kennan and Harvey wrote, “The day of the plugs-out test
(i.e., the simulation), the TV camera inside the space-craft, which was an important piece of flight
and test equipment, was absent; its retaining brackets had somehow been bent during installation.”
Kennan and Harvey go on to explain that fire extinguishers were normally located in the spacecraft
during its testing, and that fire resistant teflon sheets would be draped over wire bundles and the
astronaut's couches. “These particular items, non flight items, were conspicuously absent in
command module 012 during the fatal plugs-out test on January 27, 1967.” Kennan and Harvey
concluded their observations of the Apollo 1 fire by listing the following anomalies which occurred
on that fateful day.

• It was the first and only use of the new three piece hatch.
• It was the first plugs-out test in which as many as three hatches were closed on a crew in an
oxygen atmosphere at a pressure of sixteen pounds per square inch.
• It was the first occasion of the Apollo emergency escape drill under all-out pre-launch
conditions.
• It was the first occasion when certain non flight flammable materials, such as two foam
rubber cushions - were placed in the cockpit.

It may have been an awareness of numerous departures from standard operating procedure which led
the three astronauts to suspect something ominous lay in store for them. One obvious sign of the
men’s concern is that Grissom had Wally Schirra, the astronauts’ representative, to request that
Joseph Shea, the project manager, be present in the command module for this simulation. Joseph
th
Shea declined, stating there was not enough time to install a 4 headset in the module. In the book
Angle of Attack, author Mike Gray states that Grissom told his wife, “If there ever is a serious
accident in the space program, it's likely to be me.”

One might reasonably conjecture that such statements and behavior by Grissom were related to his
conflict with NASA management. He evidently understood he was a thorn in the side of NASA’s
top brass, and he feared the repercussions. Speaking to an Associated Press reporter, Grissom had
stated that the chances of the Apollo Space Program meeting its mission requirements was “pretty
slim” (p. 117, Footprints On the Moon, 1969). In this same book published by the AP news service,
it is stated that Grissom threatened to go public regarding problems with the LEM (Lunar Excursion
Module). This was the sort of bad press the American space program desired to avoid for it could
jeopardize their funding in Congress. Astonishingly, in the same year of 1967 four other Apollo
astronauts died in plane crashes and one in a car wreck. The statistical probability of so many
individuals from a small pool of people perishing in “accidents” in such a short period of time is
astronomical, or perhaps we should say, “astronautical.”

Grissom’s wife Betty, and his son Scott, have insisted from the beginning that NASA was covering
up what really happened. By 1972, five years after the Apollo 1 tragedy, Betty Grissom had not
received any compensation from NASA for her husband’s death. Just before the statute of limitations