its way through the atmosphere. I am sure that what I saw were shock waves. We were really bouncing along at this point. I was pulling quite a few Gs – they built up to 11.2. But they were no sweat. I had taken as many as 16on the centrifuge, and this seemed easy by comparison. I could also hear a curious roar inside the capsule during this period. This was probably the noise of the blunt nose pushing its way through the atmosphere.
Both the drogue chute and the main chute broke out right on schedule. There was a slight bouncing around when the big one dug into the air, but this was no problem. The capsule started to rotate and swing slowly under the chute as it descended. I could feel a slight jar as the landing bag dropped down to take up some of the landing shock.
I hit the water with a good bump at T+15 minutes 37 seconds.
I felt that I was in very good shape. I had opened up the faceplate on my helmet, disconnected the oxygen hose from the helmet, unfastened the helmet from the suit, released the chest strap, the lap belt, the shoulder harness, knee straps and medical sensors. And I rolled up the neck dam of my suit, a sort of turtle-neck diaphragm made out of rubber to keep the air inside our suit and the water out in case we get dunked during the recovery. This was the best thing I did all day.
This procedure left me connected to the capsule at only two points: the oxygen inlet hose which I still needed for cooling, and the communications wires which led into the helmet. Now I turned my attention to the hatch. I released the restraining wires at both ends and tossed them to my feet. Then I removed the cap from the detonator which would blow the hatch, and pulled out the safety pin. The detonator was now armed. But I did not touch it. I would wait to do that until the last minute, when the helicopter pilot told me he was hooked on and ready for me to come out.
I was in radio contact with “Hunt Club”, the code name for the helicopters which were on their way to pick me up. The pilots seemed ready to go to work, but I asked them to stand by for three or four minutes while I made a check of all the switch positions on the instrument panel. I had been asked to do this, for we had discovered on Al’s flight that some of the readings got jiggled loose while the capsule was being carried back to the carrier. I wanted to plot them accurately before we moved the capsule another foot. As soon as I had finished looking things over, I told Hunt Club that I was ready. According to the plan, the pilot was to inform me as soon as he had lifted me up a bit so that the capsule would not ship water when the hatch blew. Then I would remove my helmet, blow the hatch, and get out.
I had unhooked the oxygen inlet hose by now and was lying flat on my back and minding my own business when suddenly the hatch blew off with a dull thud. All I could see was blue sky and sea water rushing in over the sill. I made just two moves, both of them instinctive. I tossed off my helmet, grabbed the right edge of the instrument panel and hoisted myself right through the hatch. I have never moved faster in my life. The next thing I knew I was floating high in my suit with the water up to my armpits.
Things got a little messy for the few minutes that I was in the water. First I got entangled in the line which attaches the dye marker package to the capsule. I was afraid for a second that I would be dragged down by the line if the capsule sank. But I freed myself and figured I was still safe. I looked up then and for the first time I saw the helicopter that was moving in over the capsule. The spacecraft seemed to be sinking fast, and the pilot had all three wheels down in the water near the neck of it while the co-pilot stood in the door trying desperately to hook on. I swam over a few feet to try and help, but before I could do anything he snagged it. The top of the capsule went clear under water then. But the chopper pulled up and away and the capsule started rising gracefully out of the water.
I expected the same helicopter crew to drop a horse collar near me now and scoop me up. That was our plan. Instead, they pulled away and left me there. I found out later that the pilot had a red warning light on his instrument panel, telling him that he was about to burn out an engine trying to bolt on to the capsule. Normally, he could have made it. But the capsule full of sea water was too heavy for him, and he had to cut it loose and let it sink. I tried to signal to him by waving my arms. Then I tried to swim over to him. But by now there were three other choppers all hovering around trying to get close to me, and their rotor blades kicked up so much spray that it was hard to move.
The second helicopter in line was right in front of me, and I could see two guys standing in the door with what looked like chest packs strapped around them. A third guy was taking pictures of me through a window. At this point the waves were leaping over my head, and I noticed for the first time that I was floating lower and lower in the water. I had to swim hard just to keep my head up. It dawned on me that in the rush to get out before I sank I had not closed the air inlet port in the belly of my suit, where the oxygen tube fits inside the capsule. Although this hole was probably not letting much water in, it was letting air seep out, and I needed that air to help me stay afloat. I thought to myself, “Well, you’ve gone through the whole flight, and now you’re going to sink right here in front of all these people.”
I wondered why the men in the chopper did not try coming in for me. I was panting hard, and every time a wave lapped over me I took a big swallow of water. I tried to rouse them by waving my arms. But they just seemed to wave back at me. I wasn’t scared now. I was angry. Then I looked to my right and saw a third helicopter coming my way and dragging a horse collar behind it across the water. In the doorway I spotted Lieutenant George Cox, the Marine pilot who had handled the recovery hook which picked up both Al Shepard and the chimp, Ham. As soon as I saw Cox, I thought, “I’ve got it made.”
The wash from the other helicopters made it tough for Cox to move in close. I was scared again for a moment, but then, somehow, in all that confusion, Cox came in and I got hold of the sling. I hung on while they winched me up, and finally crawled into the chopper. Cox told me later that they dragged me fifteen feet along the water before I started going up. I was so exhausted I cannot remember that part of it. As soon as I got into the chopper I grabbed a Mae West and started to put it on. I wanted to make certain that if anything happened to this helicopter on the way to the carrier I would not have to go through another dunking!
When I had been aboard the carrier for some time an officer came up and presented me with my helmet. I had left it behind in the sinking capsule, but somehow it had bobbed loose and a destroyer crew had picked it up as it floated in the water.
“For your information,” the officer said, “we found it floating right next to a ten-foot shark.”
This was interesting, but it was small consolation to me. We had worked so hard and had overcome so much to get Liberty Bell launched that it just seemed tragic that another glitch had robbed us of the capsule and its instruments at the very last minute. It was especially hard for me, as a professional pilot. In all my years of flying this was the first time that my aircraft and I had not come back together. Liberty Bell was the first thing I had ever lost.
We tried for weeks afterwards to find out what had happened and how it had happened. I even crawled into capsules and tried to duplicate all of my movements, to see if I could make the same thing happen again. But it was impossible. The plunger that detonates the bolts is so far out of the way that I would have had to reach for it on purpose to hit it, and this I did not do. Even when I thrashed about with my elbows, I could not manage to bump against it accidentally. It remains a mystery how that hatch blew. And I am afraid it always will. It was just one of those things.
Fortunately, the telemetry system worked well during the flight, and we got back enough data while I was in the air to answer the questions that I had gone out to ask. We missed the capsule, of course. It had film and tapes aboard which we would have liked to study. But despite all our headaches along the way, and an unhappy ending, Liberty Bell had performed her mission. She had flown me 302.8 miles downrange, had taken me to an altitude of 118.2 miles at a speed of 5,168 mph, had put me through five minutes of weightless flight, and had brought me home, safe and sound. That was all that really mattered. The system itself was valid. The problems which had plagued us could be fixed, and with our second and final sub-orbital mission under our belts, we were ready now for the big one – three orbits of the world.
Glenn’s orbital flight
