Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

“How do you expect us to talk to you from the moon,” the commander snapped through the static, “when we can’t even communicate from the pad to the blockhouse?” The technicians promised they’d look into this too.

At 6:20 Florida time, the countdown reached T minus 10 minutes, and the dock was stopped temporarily while the engineers fiddled with the communications problem and a few other glitches. As in any real launch, this ersatz one was being monitored at both the Cape and the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. The protocol called for the Florida team to run the show from countdown through liftoff through the moment the booster’s engine bells cleared the tower; then they would hand the baton to Houston.

Helping to run the show in Florida were Chuck Gay, the chief spacecraft test conductor, and Deke Slayton, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts. Before ever getting a chance to fly in space, Slayton had been grounded because of an irregular hearbeat, but he had managed to make lemonade out of that particular lemon, getting himself appointed director of Flight Crew Operations – in essence, chief astronaut – while quietly and insistently lobbying for a return to flight status. So much an astronaut at heart was Slayton that earlier today, when the communications from the ship first started to go to hell, he had offered to climb into the spacecraft, fold himself into the lower equipment bay at the astronauts’ feet, and remain there for the countdown to see if he couldn’t dope out the static problem himself. The test directors vetoed the idea, however, and Slayton instead found himself seated at a console next to Stu Roosa, the capsule communicator, or Capcom. In Houston, the overseer today – as on most days – was Chris Kraft, deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center and the man who had served as flight director on all six Mercury flights and all ten Geminis.

Kraft, Slayton, Roosa, and Gay were eager to get this exercise over with. For more than half a day, the crew had been flat on their backs under the weight of their own bodies and their bulky pressure suits, in couches not designed for the oppressive load of a one-g environment but the friendly float of weightless space. In a few more minutes, they could get the countdown rolling again, complete their simulated blastoff, and then get those men out of there.

But this was not to be. The first sign that something was amiss came moments before the clock was set to start running again, at 6:31 p.m., when technicians watching the video monitor of the comand module noticed a sudden movement through the hatch window, a shadow moving rapidly across the screen. Controllers accustomed to the deliberate movements of well-drilled crewmen plodding through a familiar countdown snapped their heads to the screen. Anyone who didn’t have a monitor directly in front of him or who was out on the scaffold-like gantry surrounding the Apollo ship and its 224-foot booster would have noticed nothing. A moment later, a voice crackled down from the tip of the rocket.

“Fire in the spacecraft!” It was Roger Chaffee, the rookie, calling out.

On the gantry, James Gleaves, a mechanical technician monitoring communications through his headset, turned with a start and began running toward the White Room, which led from the uppermost level of the gantry to the spacecraft. In the blockhouse, Gary Propst, a communications control technician, looked instantly to his top-left monitor, the one connected to a camera in the White Room, and thought – thought – he could make out a bright glow of some kind through the hatch’s porthole. At the Cape’s Capcom console, Deke Slayton and Stu Roosa, who had been reviewing flight plans, looked at their monitor and believed they saw something that looked like a flame playing about the seam of the hatch.

At a nearby console, assistant test supervisor William Schick, who was responsible for keeping a log of every significant event in the course of the countdown, looked immediately at his flight clock and then dutifully recorded: “1831: Fire in the cockpit.”

On the communications line, those same words echoed down from the spacecraft “Fire in the cockpit!” shouted Ed White through his balky radio. The flight surgeon glanced at his console and saw that White’s heartbeat had spiked dramatically. Environmental control officers looked at their readouts and noticed that spacecraft motion detectors were picking up furious movement inside the craft. On the gantry, Gleaves heard a sudden whoosh coming from the command module, as if Grissom were opening the O 2vent to dump the spacecraft’s atmosphere – precisely what you’d want to do if you were trying to choke off a fire. Nearby, systems technician Bruce Davis saw flames shoot from the side of the ship near the umbilical cord that connected the ship to the ground systems. An instant later fire began dancing along the umbilical itself. At his blockhouse monitor, Propst could see flames behind the porthole; through them, he could also see a pair of arms – from the position, they had to be White’s – reaching toward the console to fumble with something.

“We’re on fire! Get us out of here!” Chaffee shouted, his voice clear on the ship’s one perfect channel. From the left of Propst’s screen, a second pair of arms – they had to be Grissom’s – appeared in the porthole. Donald Babbitt, the pad leader – whose desk was just twelve feet away from the spacecraft, on the top level of the gantry-level – shouted to Gleaves, “Get them out of there!” As Gleaves dashed toward the hatch, Babbitt turned to grab his pad-to-blockhouse communications box. Just then, a huge burst of smoke erupted from the side of the craft. Beneath it, a duct that was supposed to vent steam now sent out tongues of flame.

From the blockhouse Gay, the test director, called up to the astronauts in disciplined tones: “Crew egress.” There was no answer. “Crew, can you egress at this time?” “Blow the hatch!” Propst screamed to no one in particular. “Why don’t they blow the hatch?”

Through the smoke on the gantry, someone shouted, “She’s going to blow!”

“Clear the level,” someone else ordered.

Davis turned and ran toward the southwest door of the gantry. Creed Journey, another technician, threw himself to the ground. Gleaves backed warily away from the ship. Babbitt stayed at his desk, intent on raising the blockhouse on his comm box. On the ground, the environmental control console recorded the cabin pressure at 29 pounds per square inch, twice sea level, and the temperature off the scale. At that moment, with a crack and a roar and a burst of hideous heat, the Apollo 1 spacecraft – America’s flagship moonship surrendered to the inferno inside it, splitting at the seam like an old treadless tire. Fourteen seconds had elapsed since Chaffee’s first cry of distress.

A dozen feet away from the Apollo command module, Donald Babbitt felt the full force of the explosion. The pressure wave knocked him back on his heels and the blast of heat felt as if someone had flung open the door of a giant furnace. Sticky, molten globules shot from the ship, splattered his white lab coat and burned through to his shirt beneath. The papers on his desk charred and curled. Nearby, Gleaves felt himself slammed backward against an orange emergency escape door – an escape door that he now discovered had been installed to open in, not out. Davis, turning away from the ship, felt a scorching breeze at his back.

At the capcom station in the blockhouse, Stu Roosa frantically tried to raise the crew by radio while Deke Slayton collared the blockhouse medics. “Get out to the pad,” he ordered them. “They’re going to need you.” In Houston, a helpless Chris Kraft saw and heard the chaos on the gantry and found himself in the utterly unfamiliar position of having no idea what was going on aboard one of his ships.