"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today (4 page)

I smiled. Before the week was finished, I would be covering the Polaris launch, the solid-fueled missile that would soon go to sea aboard nuclear submarines.

There were other areas too dark to identify, but from the air, I realized I was seeing the Cape as I had never seen it before. This was not merely a site where buttons were pushed and missiles screamed into the sky. It was a vast assembly, the workshop of a laboratory that stretched more than five thousand miles across the Atlantic. It was vibrant, expensive, terribly complicated, and dangerous, but most of all, vital to all of us.

Martin Caidin and Jay Barbree could often be seen flying this German World War II Messerschmitt ME–108 fighter over Florida. The German fighter with its original markings raised many eyebrows at local airports, and once Caidin had to make an emergency landing on U.S. 1, coming to a stop in front of a motel. He grinned and asked, “You have a room?” (Caidin Collection).

I rolled the Messerschmitt westward, cutting power and trimming the World War II fighter for a rapid descent. Three brilliant lights flashed and disappeared, first white, then green. They were the flasher beacons from Titusville’s executive airport. I made a long, straight-in approach to the runway and the aircraft settled easily on the concrete.

I
t was a beautiful Florida day for the first full-scale Polaris launch.

We reporters and photographers were taken to the roof of a vacated radar building overlooking the missile’s launch pad.

The Polaris was a white-and-black stubby thing. Both of its stages were packed full of solid fuel—something like candle wax instead of liquid. That was because the fifteen-hundred-mile-range missiles, with more destructive power than all the bombs dropped in World War II, were to ride inside silos on board nuclear submarines.

The safety people had placed a standard, liquid-fuel missile’s destruct package on board. The explosives were there to blow the Polaris to shreds if it acted up, but this was unknown to the experts; this destruct package couldn’t get the job done. It needed about four times the explosives to blow the solid-fuel Polaris into harmless debris.

The countdown moved through its final seconds, and Polaris leapt from its pad, racing skyward much faster than its liquid-fuel brethren. Cheering onlookers were hooting and hollering as Polaris, unlike the liquid-fuel rockets, climbed on a solid stack of white smoke. It was a joy to see until—you guessed it—Polaris decided to go its own way.

Instantly, the range safety officer sent a radio signal to destroy the missile, to stop it from threatening life or property, but instead of blowing it into harmless burning trash, the underpowered destruct package simply separated the Polaris’s two stages.

The first stage, the one that had been ignited at launch, continued to burn, and took a new course toward coastal towns.

Suddenly, a panicked voice began screaming over the Cape’s squawk box, “All personnel on the Cape take cover!”

No member of the press moved. We stood staring into the sky. The
Polaris’s unlit second stage appeared like a huge white barrel tumbling over and over, heading directly toward us.

The squawk box kept screaming for us to take cover, and our escort, Major Ken Grine, kept yelling, “Get the hell off this roof!”

At that very moment, a naval commander was bringing a tray of sandwiches up the stairs, unaware of what was happening.

“Come on, you guys,” Grine yelled again. “It’s my ass if you don’t get off this roof.”

Again, no one moved, and the major stamped his foot and took off running down the stairs, sending tray and sandwiches and naval commander tumbling to the ground. I quickly refocused my attention skyward to see the Polaris’s second stage breaking apart. It was now in several pieces. A large chunk plunged into the roof of a car parked next to our building; it smashed the vehicle flat, including its tires. Other debris, most of it now burning, showered an area around us the size of a football field. One piece smacked into the roof in front of my feet.

The instant smell of burning tar got our attention, but we still didn’t move. Associated Press photographer Jimmy Kerlin had his legs and arms wrapped around his tripod, shooting pictures of everything in sight.

The Polaris’s first stage continued burning its way toward land. God, it could even hit Cocoa! Hundreds could soon be killed. Then, I moved. I ran down the stairs, demanding that Major Grine take us off the Cape so we could get to the impact site and report whatever happened.

Grine agreed. We quickly got on the bus and as we moved through the guarded gate, I jumped off to the safety of civilian soil. I ran for the same public phone booth where I had covered the
Vanguard
blowup. I was on the air within a minute, telling NBC network listeners what I knew; and when I completed my report I ran onto the highway, waving down the first car coming my way. The driver gave me a ride to the Hitching Post Trailer Park, where the crowd was still growing. The steaming first stage of the Polaris was in the Banana River, only a couple of hundred feet behind rows of house trailers.

“We get all the tornadoes, God,” someone yelled. “Why us? Why stray mis
siles too?”

“Anyone hurt?” I yelled back, and voices from among the crowd reported, “No!”

I stopped long enough to catch my breath before I started checking the place out, interviewing eyewitnesses.

There were no apparent injuries or damages, but what had the crowd buzzing, of more interest even than the wayward missile, was the woman who had been taking a shower in her trailer. When the Polaris thundered into the river, she ran out to see what was going on. Yep, she had forgotten one important item—her clothes. The Lady Godiva of Cape Canaveral’s Hitching Post Trailer Park received as much print in the local paper the next day as did the runaway Polaris. Go figure.

N
ASA could not have gone looking for astronauts in a more inhospitable place, a barren, snake-infested high desert where sand and sun had whitened the bones of the long-forgotten foolhardy, where winds sliced through the snarled Joshua trees which stood like sentries, and where a flat, dry lake bed offered America’s most skilled test pilots the longest runways in any direction: California’s Edwards Air Force Base.

It was from this high-tech flight center, as well as from the homes of the country’s best naval and marine aviators, that NASA gathered its future astronauts. Each candidate had to have at least fifteen hundred hours’ flight time in America’s fastest, most unforgiving jets. Fifty-eight air force, forty-seven navy, and five from the marine corps applied.

Early in 1959, these applicants were undergoing extreme physiological, psychological, and leadership tests at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. NBC thought that, being a pilot, I should crawl in these same horror chambers. But there was a difference. There was no way I was going to ride a temperamental rocket, and I could not think of a single reason why I should put my cowardly body through such torture.

But NBC did not agree, and I headed north to join Jim Kitchell. Kitch
and crew were at Wright Patterson shooting a
Chet Huntley Reporting
, a thirty-minute news show aired Sunday evenings. For the next four days I held a microphone in my hand, trying to say something that made sense while I was frozen, roasted, shaken, and isolated in chambers so quiet my own heart sounded like the loudest drum in the parade.

I survived, NBC got its twelve “How I Became an Astronaut” reports for our old weekend radio show
Monitor
, and later that week, April 9, 1959, the Mercury Seven astronauts were named—names that would, within a few short years, become legendary.

There was Malcolm Scott Carpenter, a navy lieutenant from the Korean War; Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., an air force captain who flew the hottest jets; John Herschel Glenn, a marine lieutenant colonel—a fighter pilot from two wars; Virgil “Gus” Grissom, an air force captain with one hundred combat missions over Korea; Walter M. “Wally” Schirra, a navy lieutenant commander, a veteran of ninety fighter-bomber missions in Korea; carrier and test pilot Alan Bartlet Shepard, a navy lieutenant commander; and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, an air force captain who flew fifty-six combat missions over Eur
ope and seven combat missions over Japan in World War II.

NASA announced their selection at a high-profile news conference in the nation’s capital. Since we happened to be in Dayton, Jim Kitchell decided to see if any of the seven were stationed at Wright Patterson. We were in luck. Gus Grissom’s home was a short drive, and we were off to interview his wife, Betty. Mrs. Grissom was most gracious. She invited us in and as the camera rolled, I asked, “How do you feel about your husband going into space?”

Betty smiled, and nodded toward her and Gus’s sons. “The two boys, Scott and Mark, and I have been living with a test pilot,” she began. “I don’t really feel flying into space is going to be all that different. We feel it will be risky, but if that’s what Gus wants to do, then we’re all for it.”

It was the perfect sound bite, and we were off to our television network affiliate in Dayton to develop the film. It was quick and dirty but we got our report on
Huntley-Brinkley
, and we were grateful. I had been a reporter long enough to predict much of the men’s future. The as
tronauts were instant celebrities, and I knew none of the families was remotely ready for what lay ahead. None had a clue that their privacy would soon be a fond memory.

F
or the next two years, the Mercury Seven would be hopping and jumping across the country, training to be astronauts while engineers were working to develop and perfect the Mercury space capsule.

Cape Canaveral would soon prove to be their favorite homeport, as the Florida sand spit had been an attractive stretch of land for settlements throughout its history. Here, bear shared the natural habitat with alligator and deer, and Indians buried their dead on sacred mounds. Later, some would try to hack out small patches of black, sandy earth for farming while a few went after the rich harvest of seafood. There were trappers, too, but taming the Cape was tougher than expected. It wasn’t only the persistent mosquitoes but rattlesnakes—rattlesnakes as long as gators—that had driven most
of the early pioneers away.

Citrus growers followed, but by 1960 beneath the launch gantries, the blockhouses, the hangars, and the offices, there were thousands of electrical arteries, a finely woven network of underground cables through which flashed the impulses of energy, vital messages, and electronic commands that would launch the astronauts. The Mercury Seven loved it. The persistent mosquitoes and sand fleas and other pests were under control. Air conditioning was here to stay, and island libations simply made the hot days and balmy nights a tropical paradise.

It was other chores in the astronauts’ paradise that gave them heartache. Among their duties was playing tour guide for an assortment of VIPs. They came from all branches of government and the industrial world, with little or no knowledge of the technological challenges. Putting a man in space definitely would not be easy. It would take time, and America’s leaders were shocked when the first Mercury-Atlas was launched. The mighty rocket with an unmanned Mercury spacecraft on top rode a stack of fire into the Florida sky, where it promptly blew itself to hell and beyond.

The leaders looked at the astronauts with genuine pity and offered
them more congressional monies, assuring themselves the taxpayers’ dollars would buy success.

The problem was not too little money, nor was it confined to Atlas. The next time the astronauts and congressional and industry leaders gathered, it would be a Mercury-Redstone rocket they would be watching. At the moment of ignition an electrical problem shut off its engine. The Redstone quickly settled back on its pad. Then, just as quickly, the escape-tower rocket fired, jerking itself free from the Mercury spacecraft it was suppose to lift out of danger. It raced into the sky, leaving spacecraft and rocket sitting on the launch pad.

The sight of an out-of-control rocket painting the sky with fiery brush strokes brought loudspeakers blaring the warning, “Everyone on the Cape take cover.” It was an unprecedented picture in the new space age: astronauts and congressmen and business leaders and we reporters jumping beneath bleachers and under vehicles to gain cover from flames shooting over our heads. My feet came to a stop under the press-site platform, arms wrapping my body securely around a pylon. Instantly, I felt another set of arms clinging from the opposite side. A grinning Alan Shepard asked, “Are we having fun yet?”

“Your first trip?”

We both laughed as we watched the top of the Mercury capsule pop open and the parachutes unravel and spill down the side of the Redstone.

At the same time, in a sky filled with twisting smoke trails, the escape tower’s rocket burned out and the tower tumbled back to Earth. It crashed about four hundred yards from the pad, and for those who care about such things, the tower rocket had scooted to a height of four thousand feet.

“That’ll get your attention,” Shepard said.

I nodded. “It’s your ass.”

“You wouldn’t ride it?”

“Not on the back of a flatbed truck to Cocoa.”

D
uring the Cape’s early days, humor lightened long workdays. Practical jokes were the in thing, and the astronauts quarterbacked most of them.

About thirty miles south of the Cape’s launch-pad row, Jim Rathmann ran the local Chevrolet dealership. A world-class race-car driver who was the 1960 winner of the Indianapolis 500, he was really cut from the same cloth as the astronauts, the only difference being that Rathmann did his speed on the ground instead of in the air. He worked out a deal with General Motors to give the Mercury Seven new Corvettes. Of course, such an arrangement would not be tolerated today by NASA, but in 1960 Jim Rathmann sold General Motors on the fact that the public-relations and advertising be
nefits would more than offset the cost, and the guys happily hopped into a strong friendship with Rathmann and his hot ’Vettes.

Competition was mother’s milk for the astronauts. They had to see who could get the most speed out of anything they flew, drove, sailed, or pedaled, and each astronaut’s personal Corvette was at the top of the list. After a full day of training, they would set up drag races on the long, deserted road called ICBM Row.

Cooper, Grissom, and Shepard were an unholy trio on the asphalt. They’d line up and burn rubber down the straight road by the rockets and gantries, sending rabbits, deer, wild hogs, but more important, traffic cops running through the sand dunes.

At first, there was a Barney Fife wannabe who was determined to give the astronauts tickets. The Mercury Seven, and those who had gathered to watch the fun, regarded this deserted and restricted road as none of his business. They took his ticket book and ripped it to pieces. Cooper decided to eat a few pages while the others undressed the “Rent-A-Cop” and threw him and his pistol, badge, and uniform into the surf. Next they drove his patrol car deep into the sand, where it took two wreckers to get it out. It was a great way to get rid of the tension that built up during the long work hours,
and the polite astronauts thanked Barney Fife for the good fun.

The traffic-cop matter was soon dropped because the U.S. Attorney
had the final say on federal property, and it seems that he had married the sister of one of those involved. The ticket writer was invited to leave the Cape. He found a ticket-writing vacancy in the Cocoa Beach Police Department.

Only days had passed when the same traffic cop found himself in another donnybrook with the feds.

Air police with Thompson submachine guns were escorting an urgently needed secret missile unit through Cocoa Beach at about 3:00 in the morning. The speed limit was 35, but the urgently needed freight was moving about 50 along deserted A1A. Barney Fife pulled the escorted truck over and began writing the driver a ticket. The air police ordered him to step aside, and Barney Fife decided to draw his big, bad .38. The clicking sounds of rounds going into the barrels of the Thompsons persuaded him to rethink his action.

As the story goes, the John Wayne of spacecoast traffic cops decided his talents could best be used in the backwaters of Louisiana. He wasn’t missed, and the drag races continued without further interruption.

We reporters weren’t permitted on federal property to witness these races, but some of us got the results first hand daily. A few years before Alan Shepard died, he admitted, “Barbree, there’s no way all the stories that have been told about us can be true. But most of them are good for a laugh.”

Soon Gordo Cooper was leaving Alan Shepard in the dust at the starting gate of the drags. Alan wasn’t laughing. Fuming, he turned to Gus. “What the hell’s going on?”

Gus grinned. “You’re getting your ass kicked,” he told Alan, who drove off disgusted and headed for Rathmann’s Chevrolet.

Jim was in the garage, and Alan went in growling. “There’s something wrong with my car, Jim; you gotta do something.”

“Leave it with me, Alan,” Jim said, smiling.

Jim was in on Gordo’s prank, and when Alan picked up his ’Vette and tried Gordo again, he lost. He had expected his ’Vette to perform better, but now it was even worse. Alan was beginning to smell a rat, and he took the car in again, even more adamant with Jim that something be done.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper (seated in race car) is seen here with Jim Rathmann (kneeling) and astronaut Gus Grissom (standing on left) in Rathmann’s garage, where most nasty pranks were hatched. (Rathmann Collection)
.

Fighter pilots had a tradition of painting swastikas or rising-sun flags for each kill on the side of their cockpits during World War II. When Alan returned this time, his car had four Volkswagens and two bicycles painted on its driver’s door. Alan was on his knees laughing. He soon learned the mechanic had changed the rear-end ratio on his ’Vette. This gave him more speed but less pickup. Gordo’s car could outrun Alan’s for about two miles—long enough to win every drag. It was truly a classic “Gotcha.”

The fun soon spilled over into their workplace. Walt Williams was the boss. He was a serious man. Williams moved about the Cape’s buildings and launch complexes with a driven determination. A frown on his face was a major part of his daily dress, and on one particular day, when the astronauts were working on the Mercury-Redstone launch pad, Williams suddenly remembered he had to make a luncheon speech in Cocoa Beach. “I’ve gotta be in town in twenty minutes,” he complained. “I left my car back at
the office.”

Alan Shepard stepped forward. “Take my ’Vette, Walt, I’ll catch a ride in with Gus.”

Walt Williams was rarely offered a favor. He wasn’t sure how to respond. He did, however, manage a slight smile. “Thank you, Commander Shepard,” he said politely. “But I don’t know if I can drive a hot car like yours.”