Gus grissom, one of the original mercury astronauts, First American astronaut to go twice into space, edward white, 36 years old, the First American to walk into space, and rookie astronaut rogerok chaffee, trainingni for his first space spa space flightu n31st. The fire hit at about 66 30 xd tonight. They were5a inside the spaceshi pressurized, buttoned up inside u qmwhen the firen hit. A Closedcircuit Television camera was relaying pictures of the astronauts lying on their ram the two state saturn one. It according to a nasa spokesman watching the televisionni scree in the block house a few hundred yards away from launchpad 34. The screen went blank and he saidxd there was noxd cgm unica from the astronauts. Silently and apparently swiftly. Their bodies have beenxdni lpa the spacecraft, according to the latest information from theq cape, pending an investigation president johnson tonight mourned the death of the three astronauts, he said they gave service, our brave men in uniform, whether in vietnam grz seeking the frontiers of the of us thelplp tragic loss of th gallant and dedicated airmen. This film was shot about ten days ago down at cape kennedy. At the time of another test for the apollo spacecraft and the saturn one rocket. Rogerfa chaffee, there are the the left, ed white in the middle. Ce1 gusfa grissom, onefa of the oril mercury astronauts, this is ed a 0 qeu is roger chaffee, he was the rookie in the crew, chaffee born in grand rapids, michigan, like gusfa grissom,xd graduate, fah i two of small children. Ed white, 36 years old, father uz children, born of a military family int san antoni texas, graduate oflp west point t of e1e1purdue univers. With me here infa the cbs newsoo room is robert wussler, executive editor of the cbs news space unit. Bob, i wonder if you would tell us a little bit about thet roct a the spacecraft. Certainly, mike. This is a saturn 1blp rocket, also referred to as ani] uprate this lower portion, ill separate them herexdav6 for yous is the launch vehicle. First stage, second stage. This is not the vehicle that eventually wil] takee1 u. S. Astronauts to the moon, this is an interim rocket that will be using for the next couple of flights. Now, what i have in my hand now is the where the accident occurred this afternoon. This is0l the launch escape tow on a launch day, prior to flight, agn abort such as that occurred today, the thought here would have been that the launch escapenr tower would have taken spacecraft, this isx÷ the comma module with the three astronauts actually fly, would have taken them safely away from any blowups. However, the type of accident that occurred today, this was a internal fire in here caused by oxygen which well talk about in a second. May we look at theo[co large model over here. This is the same thing that we have been talking niabout, again, then2h aunchco escape to and this is a larger niok thr times the mockup we have3w her. This is the commandnr module. This is where the astronauts were today. This is the service module. This is where the fuels and the Electrical Systems are housed, engineered in here. W3 the spacecraft today was in a fully pressurizedwmnoksystem. The speculation tonight, and again, i must say speculation electrical problem,lxrossibly with some plastic wires orrn something of that nature, but this isok speculation purely th an electrical short circuit occurred and, of coursd. I think everyone knowscox. Lq would happn in the event of an electrical short circuit and 100 i]oomoxy state. Thats our speculation as of the moment, mike. Thexd three men were to have gone up on february 21e1st for 14day thats right. Upwards of two weeks. Our g5dns was it we a ten or 11day flight, but were twoweek flight. Light, but were the latest news from cape Spacecraft Center is t flight ofni apollo 1 has been postponed indefinitely. The hallmark of americas Space Program since the first mercury launch as all of us americans know has been its openness, a of nasa to letco the American People share in this incredibler adventure. Preparations forcg qp r new spa flight beginning with mercury through all of thei] gemini ser and now with this lpone, Apollo Apollo 1, there were a series of advance interviews with the astronauts involved. A few weeks ago, down at the manned Spacecraft Center in houston, gusi] grissom, ed whit Nelson Benton and talked about the mission which ended in flamesxd on pad 34 tonight. Description of the apollo spacecraft. Again with our action control nozzles here, with a steam vent the outside, as i flip this part of the structure here, we can see the interior, you can see the three of x us in our positions, on the left side, ed white in the center andco 4 i chaffee on the right, and down below each of these two outerq stations are sleep stations,lped then the seat will move forward andq gives us a lotlp of standi room down in this area 0lhere. Area youre looking atok here i the navigation station, the sextant and telescop rnn are do there and the computer and the basic navigation is down in that area. If you can looku Instrument Panel and most of the systems and their marking instruments are from this point over. Roger has those twoni during orbit. A primary flight station for the for our attitude ok our eight bal andni all3wof the instruments a switchesnr to make our sps burn. ni spacecraft can be flown, actually flown from all three pilot positions. Yes. As far as the flight controls stick thatok flies it, it is moveable. We can move it from the left station to center station to the right station or evs. n down lowo equipment bay if we need to. About as good as this model allows, i guess. Jf you flew on mercury, flew gemini, now flying on apollo. Is there a law ofok q q ages so far as the possibility of a n bother youi] at all . Hmind. There isok axd possibility thats going to have a catastrophic failure, of course. Can happen on any flight. Can happen on the last one and thex just plan as best you can to take care of all of these eventualities. And you get a well trained crew and you go w3t fly. This spacecraft youre going toe1 ride on is a toco a cer extent, untried. You approach it with any apprehension as compared to the gemini, which had beeni] flown no, i dont think so. I think you havexd to understan the feeling that a pilot hrs and thatt a test pilot has that i look forward to a great deal to pride involved and making afa first flight. I thinki] imfa looking forward the flightx÷. q a great deal o anticipation. Is there anything scary about a first space flight, even ,ee hours and conventional aircraft, jet aircraft . I] i dont likelp to say anythi scary about it. There is a lot of unknowns, of course, and a lot of problems that could develop or might develop and theyll have to be solved. Hahp hc i hing will work for us. I dont thinkni it will be probably a whole lot worsen this a guy makingi] a fist test flig on au apprehensive when they count down. I dont see how you couldnt help but be a little bit excited. But i dontt think anybody is, you know, i dont like to use the word scared. I think youre apprehensive and consideril]ni] what is involved thinking about it. You know how to handle it and take care of iti]c and do the j. To take is another step toward the moon. G could youxd philosophize on why you think we should go to the co moon . I think thezare so many reasons why we nishould. I guesgi some of my special reasons ill give to u nes that a give to u the influence of the Lunar Program on raising of our young people in the country. I think our most prime responsibility is to provide an environment so that our children will be able to grow up and do creative, useful and good citizens and i think that the 3 program more so t anything we have done in the past has given a stimulusq to te young peopleco and the very youq children even, in a goal for them and a purpose for them to educate themselves as well as capability,c and to have even though theyre not goinbi to be obviously all become astronauts, what they start outfa with a certain goal, when theyre young, and the goal isw properly directed, these young people i think have a much more of a chance offa becomingxd use and welle1 educatede1 citizens we get older and we dont have the capability to direct the cd world, the young people will run our world for us when we get older. I guess this is a one of the things i feel the most stronglyd about, but ixd also feel that this is from a standpoint of civilization and i think of ouru making the countryt easy for u to live in and making outf surroundingst sojf comfortable that were in really an ever descendingco spiraling spiral right withinxd ourselves. If we dont look out andxd don try to expandw3 ourselves and expand our horizons, which i thinke1 the Space Program is th biggest example of expanding undertaken, were not going to progress as a nation. d problem lit more practical viewpoint, i think, thatfa just plaint lp stimulating ourxk industry, which feeds right back into making the comforte1 items t< standpoints, it is a good program. Why we want to go to the smoon specifically, it is the closest thing that we havent explored to our earth and it is thefa fit to our earth and it is thefa fit rm astronaut ed white,t the fit american to walk in space aboard flight during the gemini series. Command pilot jim mcdivit. At 10 30, rescue teams began to remove thexdfa bodies of the th spacecraft, perched 200 feet above launchpad 34. Clpp, as i said, two of the three astronauts have died tonight on june 3rd, 1965, the man that climbed out of thekoi] through the frozen vacuum of space, clad only in a spacesuit. Here is that historic flight, described by ed white oke1e1 hi. This is actually looks like the egress. This is when im coming out. What i tried to do iskxfly with the gun, maneuver with the gun out of the spacecraft. Xd spacecraft this time, there was no push offni whatsoever fromxd spacecraft. The gun actuallye1 provided the impulse for me to leave the spacecraft. The first time i tried to come the first time i tried to come mulx influence of the gun, im trying to maneuver over to my ovcleft, i would be in front of the window, i maneuver the front and down the center line of the spacecraft, perhaps favoring an little on the right. But the gun is actually providing the impulse for myni maneuvers. Right now im dp ly working with the tether only. It ran out after my first my second translation out to the front of thet spacek 9ft and back. And thisxd was the time i had me the statement, i sure wishjf i d more fuel fort ok my gun. T ok it was pretty interesting, though. T coi] i didntfa mind getting back on the attacker system. The plume of the thrusters looked just the way mr. Chamberlain told me they would look. They came out about a foot and a half or two feet from the ok spacecraft, and didnt look very ominous at all. To two feet, was an area in which the heat, they feltcxd th heat would damage my suit. I was right above them, five or six feet above them, watching them fire atjgat time. Fa that was ed white, one of the j who died aboard the apollo spacecraft onco launch6 uau onauts apparently d instantly. Space officials set a gantry wrapped around the booster rocket prevented the use of thea apollos emergency escape system, which would havenilp be this up here at the top, the rocket that would have taken the spacecraft away from the rocketa so the only way the astronauts could havefa escaped would have been to opt hatches here in their spacecraft and scramble out and thatlpc was impossible space Officials Say thexd three astronauts possibly had no knowledge that there was a serious problem, the spacecraft and rocket werefafani not fuele. Explosive devices had been inactivated, and they could not have caused the disaster. Minor difficulties had cropped up during the countdown thisrw afternoon withlp two Systems Communications system and the. Environmental control system. And the spacecraft officials sy they dont know whether thet fe stemmed from the two troublesome systems. The fire that engulfed the spacecraft and caused the death of the three astronauts. The man who was to command the doomedu as the hard luck astronaut because of what was the closest brus with deathok of5a ameris Space Program. o[ gus grissom, flew the second mercury flight, five years ago. ; just an up andfa down ride aboa a red stone rocket, you see him here going aboard. It seems perfe3 down. Walter cronkite describes what happened. Water poured in and the capsule began to sink. nini g ye7 helicopter looks on but ws nearly dragged down as the capsule was fille k with sea water. Finally another helicopter plucked it from the water, soaking wet, unhurt and very surprised. Xdni just minding my own business when pow, i saw blue sky and water start to come in. I tookfa my helmet off and i remember taking my helmet off and grabbing the panel and pulling myself out. nii] i only remember grabbing the panel, nothqing out thexu÷door. Pad and up to thet tower 10 to5 minutes after the first indication of trouble late this afternoon. The flash fire occurred at 6 31 easteee standard time. Smoke at that point was soq intense that the rescue crewni Wearing Masks suffered smoke inhalation in spite of the maskd 27 men at the pad, 25 ofoom then suffered bad smoke inhalation. But theyre all rightjd two still under observation. As conditions allowed. But by then it was too late to save the crew. For latelpt information, fromc washington, washington reaction to what happened at cape kennedy, we go now to our cbs news studios in washington andt correspondent Dave Schoumacher and dan rather. Mike, four astronautsok are seclusion in a hotel room ae1 f blocks from where imjf sitting. Before our gordon cooper, dick gordon, Neil Armstrong and jim lovell. Gordo says we just dont feel up to talking for television. But he did consent to a very short interview fromti his room. Cooper and the others are very shocked as gordon put it, three of these men were our very closest friends. The astronauts, of course, are a roup and they feel course, are a this quite deeply. I]xde1 but while the astronauts arexd upset, it would not be fir f sa as that theyre broken hearted over this,w3 thats not test pilots, as astronauts, they were well aware of thei] danger involved in this and they seem most concerned with thexd findi out of just what wentni wrong. As cooper said, were extremely anxious, we wantx uz find out whq. Caused fait. The astronauts have be going over it. Over and over it,xd one of the astronauts jfxdsaid, ever sincey phone in the room has been ringing constantly as information comes to them from cape kennedy and the mannedjf Spacecraft Center in houston. Gordo says they still dont know enough about it to knowco reall what qu they do know that it happened during that countdown a few seconds prior to the simulated liftoff. Cooper tended to doubt it was ib the Environmental Control system, though he said there had been trouble withok the earliern this count and earlier with it in thet i] apollo program. However, he seemed toc feel tha been licked. Also a history of electrical problems in the apollo spacecraft, i asked cooper if that had been cleared up and he gavee1 a rathern short bitter h before he said, i thought so. C cooper admittedko it could be t electr;cl system, but said that would be anilp conjecture tonig. Astronauts. Grissom, white and chaffee, the other day at cape kennedy. He said gus was quite pleased with the spacecraft, all of the astronauts were, excited about it, thought they had everything under control. And then finally, last wordsco t others said, want to make it clear5a we want to forge had ahead. We have to be sure now we dont stall about justi] becauseq ofk this. Also in town today were a number of important officials of the tracked down several of them. Theco apollo at the International Club in washington was held shortly after3w the signing of the outer space treaty at the white house this afternoon. All of the top space officials were pressed for this apollo dinner this evening at thelp international niclub. Project. You might say it was a bluexd ribbon group of spacexd officia, business and industry people gathere club for what was to have been. Somet congressmenw3 and senato present, Vice PresidentHubert Humphrey was there when i arrived, which was about an hour aftefi the tragic message came from cape kennedy. Not clear whether Vice President humphrey had beenxd at the apol dinner before or if he had come over after word was received. The impression i gathered is the Vice President came to the dinner after receiving word of the accident at cape kennedy. President johnson telephoned the group at the apollo dinner and talked withni mr. James webb, t director. The old dinner was sealed off tq reporters and people from the outside for better than an hour. One thing decided in there was that there wouldnt be any statement made tonight by him, no further statement fromjf president johnson, no statement from Vice President okhumphrey. As he put it, were all members we want to make sure the American People have the correct facts and allxd of the facts bu Vice President humphrey as he came out of the building, was sad faced, he toldfa me personay i think president johnsons statement speaks for the entire country. As mike put itxd earlier, president johnsons official statement fromqthe white house was, and i quote, three valiant young men had given lives and National Service and we mourn the great loss, and ourxd heart go out to their families, co unquote, the president. And Vice President humphrey eke yode those xdw3sentiments. As the apolloco meeting broke u ef everyone in the room seemedco anxious to leave thejfroom. Some of those there didnt seem quite know how to act. A few simply shruggedi iheir shoulders and said, what can yo] say . Others soughtxd reporters out t say the one thing we want you to make clear, no one in this programfa wants to g or take a backward step. Warner von bon, a better known name in the american Space Program, was there. At first he wouldnga say anything at all. Kept saying, im a member of the team, i cant say anything, were notfa supposed toc say r anything. Finally couldnt contain himself and started to talk to us a bit, wouldnt come over to the studio and give everything approaching a full cinterview. He said, one thing that sticks out in my mind, he said, all of the astronauts are on a first name basis with death. These men know the risks. From warner van byron, allt we know is there was a teste lp go on with the threeni astronauts the spacecraft under pure oxyge1 conditions. Men probably died from asphyxiation because and thisu continues to be a direct quote, after the fire broke out in the spacet capsule, they couldnt evacuated in time, all of the oxygenxd burned up. Milwauk schoumacher in washington. Back to new york. The first apollo nrflight, which was scheduled for february 21st, has now been postponed in american Space Program, now out of it as a working astronaut. Astronaut john glenn was asked whether space is xdsafe. Quite the opposia . I think we all expect to loseni equipment like this is high sa er t as q new equipment like this, were not fighting our heads in the sand, were knocked off one of these days on some mission or another. But we all had many friends killed in aviation. This doesnt mean aviation and sa anymore. If this program is worth running there are times when people will get hurt. The program will go on. Were not going to stop our efforts. We want to make it as safe as we ca make it. John glenn, flanked by the late gus grissom, and by diek states Space Program is cbs news correspondent Walter Cronkite who just arrived in our newsroom heree1 in new york. Im sure this hits younr particularly hard because these zuhp hc friendst ofs your. nk z you knew gus grissom from the beginning at cape kennedy. Yes indeed. Thats true and it hits mexd ha. Hits everyi] american hard, no matter how well youfa knew the n personally or not. Xd i noticed through the evening we referred toc gus grissom as the hard luck guy because of what happened to himfa and that seco suborbital mercuryc , his capsule wentnr down. But, you know, gus said to me, took somei]e1 umbrage at this b called the hard luck t guy, no wants to havexd that laid again his name. He said tocpme, he said, im no the hard luck guy. Im the goodt qi] luck guy. I] im the guy that came out of the capsule that sank in the ocean. This was his attitude to thexdq whole matter of the Space Program. I would like to commentt xd if y very quickly, taking tooe1 much time on a ttsq of things that have beenok mentioned in the the matter of the escape tower, t been talking to the cape and these last several minutes to several of my friends down there, and from what i gather this wouldnt have helped a bit. If thee1xd escape tower hadfa b rigged, and there is no evidence it was and probably was not, the escape towerxdt ck workst onr pyrotechnics. There this early in the lp countdown. I dont believe. Fa im not sure aboute1 the Saturn Program but i dont think so. Even if the . ; even if the gantry, the had not been around the spacecraft to prevent it, apparentlyok if all of the evidence from the crewsnr that have been up there and looked7n into that tragedy laden spacecraft, these men could not have escaped anyway. They died absolutely instantly, which points to this most frequentlyq mentioned speculatic fire. And we all can understand, ef think, oxygen the danger of oxygen, if we dont how fast it aaums, because probably few of of going to a hospital and seeing a friend on an oxygen tent with all of the red signs warning against smoking. Any sort of yospark, it is oxygen and from the early evidence fromoom the capsule, i went and itok went fast, these n in a sense were partcni of this kdisaster, mill second disaster. And if there is anything that can beoke1 rationalized about t deaths, it undoubtedly was instantw3 takenious. These were smart testxd pilots, reaction time was amazingly fast and they would have been on that horn calling back to the w3towe even twnm report if they hadok n theyok wqe about to go, they would have reported what it was so that the rest of the program would know. Would know. Thatsoh, were. o[ o q 9 the i think one thig should be said. W3 this is a time for great sadness, national sadness and certainly personal sadness of the people in the Space Program. But also a time for courage and if that sounds trite, ill change the words to guts. The thing that these fellows said on the film, you showed earlier. The thing thatw3 everybody in t Space Program has been saying tonight has beenlp quoted. E1 web on down. That this is a test program. We knew it was a test program. These guys who went into it knew it wasxd a test program a test program with equipment of this nature, with airplanes or boats or submarines, anything youre operating in aw ostile environment, which space is. And this wasfa a hostile thew3 ground because this pure n rest of theser things, this program wasi] bounw to claim its jfvictims. These fellows, everye1 one of them, test pilots. They havee1 been at the navy te statqo71nt edwards air base,qt air force test fastation, they aircraft and have seen aq lotlp their buddies go down. I couldnt begin to telltyyou, because i dont know, the slightest ideas, the figures,xd the number ofxd tub pilots that have died int thist [vl countr the beginning of our Space Program. These are the firstfa astronaut to die in the accident directly related to the Space Program. Turning backfa or having any question of falteringi] innr ou progress forward toward the landinglp on h moon. Delayed. It may bepp mm 1 we may be able to consolidate we consolidated some in the program, but maybe a couple of months delay. Could pushco us from late 68 to 69. It may push us from 69 to e170 Something Else happens. But there is going to be a 7o delay. But certainly it shouldnt in any way damage our national re solve to press one1 with the program for which thesexd men gn thank you,t walter. So to sum up, americasfa fit threeni apollo astronautst fa w trapped and killed by a flash fire that swept their apollo spacecraft early tonight in a launchpad test ate cape kenned. Gus grissom, ed white, and rookie astronautjf roger chaffe training for his first space flight, a kuu scheduled for february 21st, now postponed indefinitely. The three menn1 aboard their spacecraft, ten minutes from a simulated liftoff, when a. Fla fire hit at 6 31nr tonightt ean standard time, they weresca in inside the spacecraft, when the fire qhit. There was a flash, and that was it ac 7pding to a nasa spokesman watching the Television Screen in theko black usock house a d yards fromx dthe launchpad. Jajuxd mourned the death of the three aid they gave their lives in the nations service. F1 os in the nations service. This has been a cbs newsi] special report. o[ next, on cspan3s americ journali[ gwen ifill who worked for the new york times, washington post, and nbc muj hour on pbs. pahe died in ni2016. The interview is from explorations in black w3 leadership, a project codirected by university of virginia professorst phyllis livellive l lea leffler and julian bond. Upbringing as the daughter of ad outspoken ame minister, her worp as both a print reporter and on camera news personality. And her experience with racism in the oknewsroom. This program was recorded in xdp thank youok for being on explorations of black we very much appreciate you being with us. Thrilled to be here. Let