[hg5714]

Grissom's mother was my great-grandmother's sister. His parents were both still alive until a few years ago. They were great people, hope they were spared these. Thanks for the great post!

[stfmg]

For sure, those ones didn't land on the moon...no conspiracy !

[rabenson]

Trapped and burned alive what a horrible way to go.

[Catsratz]

Poor guys - horrible. I got interested in Grissom after watching Apollo 13 recently and was amazed to check him out on the Internet to find that Grissom's son Scott recently claimed, in a Star tabloid article, that Grissom was murdered. Don't have the link, just type in some likely words and it should come up quick.

[Bronte1068]

These pics are awesome - I'm guessing the private sector was never supposed to see them.

[gatagato]

Originally Posted by Catsratz ↗

Poor guys - horrible. I got interested in Grissom after watching Apollo 13 recently and was amazed to check him out on the Internet to find that Grissom's son Scott recently claimed, in a Star tabloid article, that Grissom was murdered. Don't have the link, just type in some likely words and it should come up quick.

Apollo Astronaut Was Murdered, Son Charges
Christopher Ruddy
February 11, 1999

Virgil I. "Gus” Grissom, the astronaut slated to be the first man to walk on the moon, was murdered, his son has charged in the Feb. 16 edition of Star magazine.
In another stunning development, a lead NASA investigator has charged that the agency engaged in a cover-up of the true cause of the catastrophe that killed Grissom and two other astronauts.

The tabloid exclusive by Steve Herz reports that Scott Grissom, 48, has gone public with the family’s long-held belief that their father was purposefully killed during Apollo I.

The Jan. 27, 1967, Apollo I mission was a simulated launch in preparation for an actual lunar flight.

NASA concluded that the Apollo I deaths of Grissom, as well as astronauts Edward H. White and Roger Chafee, were the result of an explosive fire that burst from the pure oxygen atmosphere of the space capsule. NASA investigators could not identify what caused the spark, but wrote the catastrophe off as an accident.

"My father’s death was no accident. He was murdered,” Grissom, a commercial pilot, told Star.

Grissom said he recently was granted access to the charred capsule and discovered a "fabricated” metal plate located behind a control panel switch. The switch controlled the capsules’ electrical power source from an outside source to the ship’s batteries. Grissom argues that the placement of the metal plate was an act of sabotage. When one of the astronauts toggled the switch to transfer power to the ship’s batteries, a spark was created that ignited a fireball.

Clark Mac Donald, a McDonnell-Douglas engineer hired by NASA to investigate the fire, offered corroborating evidence. Breaking more than three decades of silence, Mac Donald says he determined that an electrical short caused by the changeover to battery power had sparked the fire.

He says that NASA destroyed his report and interview tapes in an effort to stem public criticism of the space program.

"I have agonized for 31 years about revealing the truth, but I didn’t want to hurt NASA’s image or cause trouble,” Mac Donald told the paper. "But I can’t let one more day go by without the truth being known.”

Grissom’s widow, Betty, now 71, told Star she agrees with her son’s claim that her husband had been murdered.

"I believe Scott has found the key piece of evidence to prove NASA knew all along what really happened but covered up to protect funding for the race to the moon.”

Scott Grissom told Star that the motive for his father’s killing may have been related to NASA’s desire not have his father be the first man to walk on the moon because of criticism leveled at Grissom in 1961 after his Mercury capsule, Liberty 7, sunk in the Atlantic.

Critics of Grissom, including novelist Tom Wolfe, have claimed the astronaut panicked when his space capsule landed in the ocean, and he prematurely pulled an explosive charge to open the ship’s hatch, causing it to sink.

Fellow astronauts, however, gave Grissom the benefit of the doubt for several reasons. Grissom was a decorated Korean War pilot who had flown nearly 100 combat missions. He was a courageous man not known to panic.

There was also evidence that the explosive device on the hatch could accidentally blow without being pulled -- a fact that led NASA to remove such devices from future spacecraft.

Also, had Grissom pulled the explosive release on the hatch, his hand or arm should have had powder and bruise marks. Neither were found.

Grissom, one of the original Mercury seven, was the senior astronaut when the Apollo missions began.

Among the astronauts, Grissom was the most critical of the problem-plagued Apollo program, and the main Apollo contractor, North American Aviation.

Shortly before his death, Grissom had taken a large lemon and hung it around the space capsule as the press looked on. He had suggested publicly that the project could never be accomplished on time.

The Associated Press reported, "‘Pretty slim’ was the way [Grissom] put his Apollo’s chances of meeting its mission requirements.”

The Grissom family had reason to doubt the official NASA ruling from the beginning. Even before Apollo I, Grissom had received death threats which his family believed emanated from within the space program.

The threats were serious enough that he was put under Secret Service protection and had been moved from his home to a secure safehouse.

According to his wife, Grissom had warned her that "if there is ever a serious accident in the space program, it’s likely to be me.”

The Apollo I disaster led to a series of congressional hearings into the incident and NASA. During the hearings, one launch pad inspector, Thomas Baron, sharply criticized NASA's handling of the incident and testified that the astronauts attempted to escape the capsule earlier than officially claimed.

Baron was fired soon after giving the testimony, and died, along with his wife, when his car was struck by a train. Authorities ruled the deaths as suicide.

During the congressional hearings, Sen. Walter Mondale questioned the efficacy of manned space programs. Manned space flights were opposed by many of the leading space scientists at the time, including Drs. James Van Allen and Thomas Gold.
http://archive.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/2/11/00539

[Catsratz]

Thank you, gatagato. Also, Grissom's wife Betty has stated that it took the three men over a minute to die, rather than instantaneously, as NASA claimed. (It's always "instantly" in these matters - isn't it?). Although I wouldn't put much past the U.S. government, still, I find it odd that not only Grissom but White and Chafee were incinerated in such a public manner, supposedly only over critical comments about NASA that Grissom had made.

Another casualty of the Space Race at the time was Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who died within three months of Grissom, White, and Chafee, knowing he'd probably die but choosing to go anyway because otherwise they'd have sent his good friend, Yuri Gagarin.

I wish I could paste a photo of Komarov's charred remains in his casket at his public funeral. It is absolutely horrific and not recognizable as human. He looks like something scraped off of a barbeque grill. Here is a website page with details and photos of the disaster: http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/201...ied-about.html

[gatagato]

Absolutely horrific indeed There's a thread about Komarov
http://www.documentingreality.com/fo...ing-die-73736/
also another thread you might find interesting
http://www.documentingreality.com/fo...monauts-57210/
please, let me know what you think about the audio recordings

[AnalThunder]

We've got a bad fire! Let's get out! We're burning up! We're on fire! Get us out of here!

Rest in piece.

[Catsratz]

Originally Posted by AnalThunder ↗

We've got a bad fire! Let's get out! We're burning up! We're on fire! Get us out of here!

Rest in piece.

That sounds more like it. After reading that the last transmission had been recorded and ended in a scream, I found something on YouTube. It begins with Grissom making a mildly critical comment about the communications, the last time he's heard. Soon after, one of the others mentions the fire in a fairly calm voice, static for a minute, then someone in control is heard giving orders to check on them, again in what sounds like a very calm voice given the circumstances.