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 | Gus Grissom didn't sink the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule By Jim Banke Senior Producer, posted: 07:00 am ET 17 June 2000 ET |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Gus Grissom didn't do it.
And those who were close to Gus say they have had it with the stories that America's second astronaut panicked at splashdown, accidentally blew his hatch and caused Liberty Bell 7 to sink.
 Gus Grissom poses in front of his Liberty Bell 7 capsule before the July 1961 mission. NASA image. |
"We cannot prove what happened. It was an unexplained anomaly. But we know that Grissom did not blow the hatch," Guenter Wendt, the man who helped Grissom board his Mercury capsule 39 years ago, told SPACE.com.
On July 21, 1961 a Mercury/Redstone rocket carried Grissom on a 15-minute trip through space, successfully repeating the feat performed by Alan Shepard two months earlier.
But unlike Shepard's Freedom 7 spacecraft, Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 was equipped with a window and a new hatch design capable of being thrown clear by explosive charges as needed after splashdown.
Don't blow it
To detonate the ordnance, either Grissom would have to firmly bang his wrist on a plunger inside the capsule, or a diver greeting the spacecraft in the water could move a small panel on the outside and pull on a T-shaped handle.
Later experience would show that if a Mercury astronaut were to detonate the hatch from the inside, the amount of force necessary to hit and activate the plunger would leave a nasty bruise, which Grissom didn't have.
Nevertheless, rumors began to circulate that Grissom was somehow at fault, leaving a blemish on his career that continued even after he perished in 1967 during the Apollo 1 fire along with Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
The 1983 movie The Right Stuff, based on the Tom Wolfe novel, further tarnished Grissom's legacy by its characterization of Gus as a "squirming hatch blower" who didn't have, well, the right stuff.
All because of the hatch on Liberty Bell 7.
"But I know darn well," said Wendt, with fire and determination in his still-present German accent. "I can give you all the data -- what he did and all that jazz. Anybody who comes up with some Klondike thing..."
 Launch pad leader Guenter Wendt checks out the Liberty Bell 7 capsule in this 1961 NASA image. |
Wendt pauses for a moment and then begins listing and dismissing the theories.
Static charge? No way, Wendt said.
The only way there could be a detonation from unwanted static is if the helicopter had connected its cable to the capsule, but the hatch had already blown by the time the helicopters arrived.
Gus accidentally hit the inside switch? Uh, uh, Wendt said.
To hit the switch so that it would work took all of an astronaut's strength and focus to make it happen. The switch just couldn't be accidentally brushed by an elbow and activated.
Maybe the switch on the outside was accidentally pulled?
"That is the one that I believe in," said Wendt. "It is the most logical explanation. Can we prove it? No."
An outside job?
It's a theory that's been around quite a few years but has received little public attention.
The T-shaped handle made of steel was hidden behind a small panel on the outside of the capsule, put there in case a recovery diver had to blow the hatch to get at a disabled astronaut.
The thinking is that the small panel fell off the capsule either as Liberty Bell Seven deployed its main parachute or shortly after. Grissom himself reported seeing a small hole in the chute that Wendt said approximated the size of the access panel, or shingle.
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| Mercury-Redstone 4 lifts off (left) from Cape Canaveral on July 21, 1961 to fly a 15-minute mission that ends with a Marine helicopter trying to prevent Liberty Bell 7 from sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. NASA images. |
