The other day I saw a story that doesn’t seem to have gotten much press but it concerns one of the unsolved
mysteries of the early days of the US space Program. Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 has been located on the bottom of the ocean where it has rested since sinking all those years ago. {z – As has been pointed out by readers more on the ball than me – this all happened in 1999 and I missed it. Boy is my face red. Since this story, the capsule was recovered, restored, toured the country and now rests peacefully in Kansas. I apologize for being so far behind the times}
The Mercury space capsule that carried America’s second man into space has been found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, 38 years after it unexpectedly sank shortly after splashdown.
The astronautical antique carried Virgil “Gus” Grissom on a 15-minute suborbital flight on July 21, 1961. The capsule, Liberty Bell 7, was the only American manned spacecraft lost following a successful mission. Before US Navy frogmen could secure the one-man spacecraft, emergency explosives detonated, blowing off the Liberty Bell’s escape hatch.
Grissom was hauled to safety, but the capsule took on so much water that helicopters could not lift it and it sank to a depth of three miles. Grissom went on to become Nasa’s leading astronaut, commanding Gemini and Apollo, the next two generations of manned spacecraft. But he admitted at the time that he had been frightened by the touchdown.
“I was a little scared. As an astronaut or a test pilot, you never say you are scared of anything.” The incident featured prominently in The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe’s book published in 1983. It suggested that Grissom panicked in the bobbing craft and exploded the emergency bolts himself.
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Grissom never gave a full account of the incident and died in 1967 in a fire during a pre-flight test on the Apollo 1 launch pad. The only explanation may rest in two cameras and a tape recorder that sank with the capsule and which could shed light on why the hatch blew open too soon – one of the biggest mysteries of American space flight. However, it is doubtful that the film can be salvaged after so long underwater.
Salvage experts who found the capsule on Saturday off the coast of Grand Bahama island, 300 miles south-east of Cape Canaveral, said it was in amazingly good condition considering its location. Still shiny in places, the spacecraft is propped upright on a sandy knoll, its window and parachute liner still intact and its periscope still extended. The words “United States” and “Liberty Bell” are plainly visible.
Curt Newport, a former space station worker who led the salvage operation, said he could also see the fake crack that was painted on the exterior of Liberty Bell 7 to replicate its namesake in Philadelphia, as well as the singe marks left by the explosives that blew out the hatch following splashdown.
“This was a very difficult thing to find,” he said. “The capsule is in water half a mile deeper than the Titanic and is smaller than one of the Titanic’s boilers.” Two previous expeditions to find the capsule failed.
The salvagers first scanned a 24-square mile area of the bottom of the ocean with sidescan sonar, trailed on a five-mile cable behind a boat. Just turning the boat around without tangling the lines took 12 hours. After locating 88 potential targets, they sent down a remote-control submarine. The first target they looked at turned out to be the Liberty Bell 7.
Mr Newport said the team followed decomposed pieces of the capsule’s heat shield up a hill. The trail of debris led them to the 7ft titanium and aluminum capsule. At first, Mr Newport thought the dark, conical object was aircraft wreckage and was stunned when he saw the words “United States”.
“I was totally shocked. I just could not believe we managed to find this thing,” he said. “There was a lot of shaking hands and slapping each other on the back and just staring in disbelief at this spacecraft in front of us – us being the first ones to see it since 1961.”
The search will continue with the aim of finding the hatch, which could hold the answer to why the mission went wrong. Mr Newport estimates it could be as much as a mile from Liberty Bell 7. Plans to haul the capsule to the surface have been postponed after the underwater robotic rover used to identify and photograph the spacecraft sank in rough seas.
June 12, 2008 at 5:39 pm
This is very cool indeed, but you might want to put a note about this being a “Blast From the Past!”, somewhere in the title or lead in. Liberty Bell 7 was found in July of 1999 and has since been raised, restored, aent on tour of air and space museums around the country. I was fortunate to see it when it came to Kennedy Space Center about 5 years ago. (It has been back since.) As you can see from the photo of the capsule on the bottom there was very little corrosion damage, and a remarkable number of fragile objects were recoverd inside. Gus’s plotting board with his grease penceled notes was just as he left it. There were even some legeble notes on paper. Very, very cool!