test pilot mechanical engineer astronauts
Grissom was born on April 3, 1926, in Mitchell, Indiana, the son of Dennis D. Grissom, an employee of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and Cecile King. His older sister died shortly before his birth, and he was followed by three younger siblings, Wilma, Norman and Lowell.
Grissom attended public elementary schools, and went on to Mitchell High School. He was fascinated by aviation and determined to become a pilot. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1944 and spent a year in flight training. Anticipating a need to better prepare himself for a career in military aviation, Grissom enrolled at Purdue University and earned a B. S. in mechanical engineering in 1950.
Grissom again enlisted and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the air force in March 1951. During the Korean War he flew 100 combat missions, winning the Air Medal with oak-leaf cluster and the Distinguished Flying Cross. When the war ended, he was assigned to duty as a flight instructor. Seeking new challenges, Grissom completed the Air Force Test Pilot School course at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1957. He was serving as a test pilot at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was seeking pilots to explore the problems of manned space flight for Project Mercury. Grissom volunteered for this project and was one of seven military test pilots chosen on April 9, 1959, to become the first American astronauts. After two years of training, Grissom was chosen to fly the second suborbital test flight of a Mercury spacecraft (Liberty Bell 7) on July 21, 1961. The flight was without incident until after the spacecraft landed, as planned, in the ocean. After his Mercury flight Grissom was assigned to the second manned project, Gemini, with special responsibility for monitoring the development of the spacecraft. He was named command pilot on the first manned flight; his crewmate was pilot John W. Young. Their flight on March 23, 1965, lasted nearly five hours. It accomplished some important objectives of manned space flight, including a change of the spacecraft's orbital plane; the controlling of the craft's landing point was less successful, but the attempt contributed essential information for later flights. Assigned to Project Apollo following his Gemini flight, Grissom was named on March 21, 1966, to command the first test flight of the three-man Apollo spacecraft. Less than a month before the mission was scheduled to fly, a fire at the launch site during a preflight simulation killed the entire crew, Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. On the day of the accident, the crew was conducting a routine simulation of prelaunch activities in their command module at the Kennedy Space Center. Six hours into the exercise a fire broke out in the spacecraft and spread with incredible speed, for the atmosphere in their vehicle was pure oxygen at slightly more than atmospheric pressure. Within half a minute all three crewmen were unconscious and probably dead, asphyxiated by toxic gases. They thus became the first American astronauts to die in an accident directly related to space activity.
Member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots
Grissom married Betty L. Moore on July 6, 1945; they had two children.
He was an American aeronautical engineer, U.S. Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut.
He was an American naval officer and naval aviator, aeronautical engineer, and NASA astronaut in the Apollo program.
