Gus Grissom

[My Good Babushka]

In 1961, astronaut Gus Grissom nearly drowned after a splashdown when his Mercury capsule opened prematurely. He recommended making the hatch more secure. Eight years later he died when Apollo 1 caught fire during a pre-launch test and the inward-opening hatch could not be opened with full internal pressure. All three on board perished, Grissom, Edward Higgins White, and Roger B. Chaffee.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. Salute to these Brave Men. May they be resting in honor and glory. Peace to their families.

[Cooley Hurd]

2. The GREAT Virgil I Grissom!

A personal hero of mine.

[Little Star]

3. Gil Grissom...

Crap! I watch too much television.

[LiberalElite]

4. I remember this - another

tragic event from that very eventful year 1968.

[RufusTFirefly]

5. Grissom died in January of 1967. n/t

[Historic NY]

11. Grissom, Chaffee and White .January 27, 1967 Apollo I...

remember it well. White was brought to my hometown AFB for burial at West Point

[LiberalElite]

12. ok i read the text which said 1961 and referenced 7 years later = 1968

I still remember it whichever year.

[edbermac]

6. Might have made that first 'small step' on the moon.

Alas it was not to be.

[The Blue Flower]

7. A horrible, tragic loss

It still makes me sad to remember that event. I was a grade-school kid in Orlando during the days of the Mercury program. We all got to watch the liftoffs from the schoolyard, just 50 miles away. It was so thrilling to see the sun glint off the sides of the rockets and know there were heroes in there.

[raven mad]

8. I got to meet him once; I was 6. Dad was a Nasa jock......... n/t

[Omaha Steve]

9. Grissom was born in Mitchell, Indiana, on April 3, 1926

My Dad was a Southern Indian Hoosier by birth. We visited relatives in Indiana during the summer of 1968. We made a special trip through Mitchell just to pay our respects.

Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated about a month earlier. After Indiana we went to DC. I still have a faded black & white picture I took of the eternal flame at JFK's grave site. A very mournful trip.

OS

[kairos12]

10. A truly brave man.