From NASA, a remembrance of the first tragedy to strike America’s space program:
On January 27, 1967, Apollo 1’s crew–Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee–was killed when a fire erupted in their capsule during testing. Apollo 1 was originally designated AS-204 but following the fire, the astronauts’ widows requested that the mission be remembered as Apollo 1 and following missions would be numbered subsequent to the flight that never made it into space.
40th Anniversary
Below the Beltway and Captain’s Quarters both note that today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire. It took the lives of three astronauts: Virgil Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. My first real memories of the