Virgil Ivan (Gus) Grissom

Gus Grissom

Virgil I. "Gus Grissom" was born in Mitchell, Indiana on April 3, 1926. He was always interested in flight and made his own model airplanes. He had an IQ of 150, but did not do too great in school. He was brought up in the Church of Christ.

After high school, Gus was inducted into the Air Force during World War 2, but he did not fly. He got out and went to Perdue where he got the name, "Gus". He married Betty and had 2 boys: Scott and Mark. He went back in the Air Force and became a pilot. He went to test pilot school, and he got to fly all the cool planes! He was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Before test piloting, he flew 100 combat missions over Korea in the 1950s. He won the Air Medal with oak leaf cluster, and the Distinguished Flying Medal!

Virgil Grissom became one of our first 7 astronauts of the early 1960s. He was America's second man in space, and the third overall man in space. He called his spacecraft, "Liberty Bell 7". His capsule sank after the hatch blew on its own too early. But it was recovered in 1997. He became our first man to fly in space twice. He commanded the first Gemini mission. That spacecraft was called, "Molly Brown".

Gus would have been our first to go into space 3 times, and the first on the moon, if his Apollo spacecraft did not blow up! On January 27, 1967, Gus, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were rehearsing their flight in a test capsule filled and over-pressurized with pure oxygen. There was no out in that craft at all! A frayed wire gave off an arc and started a fire. That fire spread and the pressure went way up. There was no way for that hatch to open - inside or out! Something had to give, and that capsule exploded in fiery heat! It was like a giant blowtorch! The astronauts all died within 8 seconds because all oxygen was lost, and poison gasses came in. Ed White was buried in the cemetery at West Point. Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee were buried in Arlington Cemetery. God bless the crew of Apollo 1.