Leading up to the horrific deaths of Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee there were zero indications that anything was wrong with their module. Their launch — officially named the Apollo 204 mission — was going to be the first manned Apollo mission in space. They’d gone through all of their training and sat in their module on the very launch platform that they were going to lift off from on February 21, 1967.
As the story goes, there was some worn wiring beneath Grissom’s seat which had lost its insulation and laid exposed to the air as electricity ran through the live wire. Crews outside sealed the module’s three hatches and filled the air inside with pure oxygen. A small movement made the wire spark, and because oxygen makes things burn very quickly in its pure form, it provided plenty of fuel for the fire to consume. The module cracked open and smoke started pouring out. The crew inside yelled for help and tried opening the hatches to escape but to no avail.
As NBC News recounts, brief cries came from the crew over headsets. White yelled, “Fire!” while Grissom said, “I’ve got a fire in the cockpit!” Chaffee echoed, “Fire!,” and things get muddled from there. NBC News says that Chaffee yelled, “Get us out!,” while Astronomy.com says he yelled, “Let’s get out.” Some accounts omit Chaffee’s final line, but The New York Times says that he uttered, “Hey, we’re burning up,” before the crew lost contact with the outside.
