Apollo 1 and Launch Complex 34: January 27, 1967

The first Apollo crew died on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. On January 27, 1967, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were in their command module atop a Saturn IB on Launch Complex 34, rehearsing for the first crewed Apollo flight, scheduled for February 21. At 6:31 p.m. a fire broke out in the cabin. Within seconds it filled the capsule, and the three men died before anyone could get the hatch open.

The test

It was a “plugs-out” test, NASA’s account says: the spacecraft sat on the rocket exactly as it would for launch, though the Saturn IB carried no fuel, and the crew was to go through an entire countdown. They climbed in at 1 p.m. Small problems delayed the test for hours, and a communications failure forced a hold at 5:40 p.m. At 6:30 Grissom said, “How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t talk between three buildings?”

At 6:31 the instruments recorded a surge in one of the electrical buses, possibly a short circuit. Seconds later one of the astronauts, probably Chaffee, could be heard saying what sounded like “Flames!”, and two seconds after that White said, “We’ve got a fire in the cockpit.” The last transmission from the crew ended 17 seconds after the first sign of fire.

Why no one could get them out

The hatch opened inward and was held by latches worked with ratchets, and the pressure inside the cabin, higher than outside, held it shut until the cabin was vented. Even under ideal conditions it took at least 90 seconds to open. The cabin had been filled with pure oxygen at normal atmospheric pressure, and the oxygen had had hours to soak into everything in it, so the fire spread through the cabin almost at once. Technicians on the pad were driven back again and again by heat and smoke. When they got the hatch open, about five minutes after the fire started, the crew were dead, probably within the first 30 seconds, of smoke inhalation and burns.

What changed

The investigation concluded that the most likely cause was a spark from a short circuit in a bundle of wires to the left of and just in front of Grissom’s seat, with the flammable materials in the oxygen-filled cabin letting the fire start and spread. Apollo was put on hold during the investigation, and over the next year and a half the spacecraft was changed. It got a new hatch that opened outward and quickly, self-extinguishing materials in place of flammable ones, and a mix of nitrogen and oxygen for the cabin at launch. The mission, first designated Apollo 204, was named Apollo 1 in the crew’s honor.

When Apollo next flew with a crew, it left from the same pad. Apollo 7 lifted off from Launch Complex 34 on October 11, 1968, the first time astronauts rode a Saturn rocket, and, NASA notes, the cabin atmosphere during the countdown was 65 percent oxygen and 35 percent nitrogen as a lesson of the fire.

The pad

Complex 34 was built in 1959 for the flight tests of the Saturn I and Saturn IB. Its blockhouse is a domed, earth-covered concrete building with a 23-ton main door, according to the 1984 National Historic Landmark nomination for the station. NASA declared the complex excess in 1972. The service structure and umbilical tower were salvaged between 1970 and 1972; in 1984 the blockhouse and the launch stand were still in place, and the complex is part of the landmark. How Apollo’s early flights from the cape relate to the later ones from Merritt Island is on our Apollo page.

Further Reading

• Live from Cape Canaveral by Jay Barbree