Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 19: Gus has his first successful launch

Virgil "Gus" Grissom was born on April 3, 1926, and had a pretty typical childhood growing up in Indiana.  He liked to build model airplanes as one of his hobbies, and did spend time hanging out at the airport in Bedford, Indiana, where a local lawyer would take him on flights and teach him the basics of flying.

Grissom graduated from high school towards the end of World War II, enlisting in the Army Air Corps after graduation. While he received basic flight training, he mostly worked as a clerk. He would get his chance to fly in combat during the Korean War, where he completed 100 missions and earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, among other awards. He was rotated back to the US, and eventually wound up becoming a test pilot for the Air Force.

Being a test pilot with an engineering degree (picked up at Purdue betwen the wars) made him an attractive candidate to join NASA, and after a grueling competition Grissom was named one of the seven Mercury astronauts. Grissom would fly in both the Mercury and Gemini programs; his Mercury flight almost ended in tragedy when the emergency bolts for his capsule's hatch blew unexpectedly, causing the capsule to flood. Grissom was rescued but the capsule sank.

Unfortunately, Grissom was not so lucky as one of the astronauts for the Apollo 1 mission. A fire broke out in the command module during a pre-flight test, killing Grissom and his fellow crewmates, Roger Chaffee and Edward White.