Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

422 Project Apollo: Americans to the Moon
down the production of the heavy lift booster, a decision that became final in
1972. (II-58)
Webb’s biographer Professor W. Henry Lambright concludes that Webb’s
“strategies to maintain NASA, Apollo, and other programs had succeeded and
failed in the 1964-1966 time frame.” Webb had “kept up overall momentum for
Apollo” but “NASA’s budget was cut back . . . post-Apollo was delayed, and Webb
saw his own power to persuade start to slip.” 59
The Apollo 1 Fire
Despite these concerns, there was a fair degree of optimism as 1967 began,
with the first crew-carrying flight of Apollo (an Earth-orbital test mission of
the Apollo command and service modules designated Apollo 204) scheduled
for launch on 21 February. The crew included veteran astronauts Virgil “Gus”
Grissom, Edward White, and rookie Roger Chaffee. The spacecraft they were to
fly was a “Block A” model, intended only for orbital flight.
At 1:00 p.m. on 27 January, the crew was strapped into the spacecraft as it sat
atop an unfueled Saturn 1B launcher on Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral for a lengthy
countdown test. At 6:31, as the test neared its end, Roger Chaffee told the control
room that “we’ve got a fire in the cockpit.” Within less than a minute, the three
astronauts were dead of asphyxiation as they inhaled toxic gases created by the
fire within the still-sealed spacecraft. 60
James Webb, Robert Seamans, and George Mueller learned of the fire
soon afterwards. Webb immediately notified President Johnson; later the three
huddled at NASA Headquarters to decide how to proceed. They decided to ask
the president to let NASA manage the accident investigation rather than have
the White House appoint an external investigation board. While Webb worked
to convince Johnson and congressional leaders that NASA was best qualified to
conduct the investigation, Seamans and Mueller identified the individuals who
would compose the investigation board. Apollo program director Sam Phillips
flew to Cape Canaveral (by then called Cape Kennedy) to take charge there. By
the next day, the Apollo 204 Review Board had been named; it was to be chaired
by Floyd Thompson, Director of NASA’s Langley Research Center, and had eight
other members from both within and outside of NASA. Seamans charged the
board to “review the circumstances surrounding the accident to establish the
probable cause or causes of the accident” and to “develop recommendations for
corrective or other action based upon its findings and determinations.” (II-48)
The Review Board went about its work intensively. By 25 February, its
preliminary findings were ready to be made public, and James Webb issued a
statement summarizing them. (II-49) In this statement, Webb noted that astronaut
Frank Borman, a member of the board, had told him that “he would not have
been concerned to enter the capsule at the time Grissom, White, and Chaffee
59. Ibid, p. 141.
60. See Murray and Cox, Apollo, Chaps. 14–15 for a description of the fire and its aftermath.