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This is a NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project transcript of astronaut James A. McDivitt, interviewed by Doug Ward at Elk Lake, Michigan, on 29 June 1999. McDivitt talks about flying F-86s in Korea, test pilot work at Edwards, and his first class at the Aerospace Research Pilot School. He also covers turning down Dyna-soar, joining NASA in 1962 and learning to be an Apollo Program Manager. He describes the Change Board and says decisions were not second-guessed.
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-56 didn’t expect them all to operate perfectly well. There were some fairly sophisticated cooling systems, where the coolant in the tubes froze up. It was sort of like a selective freezing process. And as these froze up, then the fluid went through different tubes; and it would heat up more and then thaw them out. I mean, this was a very, very complicated thermal control system. And we had other problems like that. There were internal—environmental control system was complicated. All the electronics were cooled by cooling plates. They would put the electronic box under a plate that had fluid going through it, and you had to seal these two together with something like grease. And so, it was a very complicated thing. And we didn’t expect it to go flawlessly. Unfortunately, as you well know, it got burned up on the pad. So— WARD: Right. At the Apollo 204 fire, as it was known at that time, and the loss of Grissom, White, and Chaffee. MCDIVITT: Right. Yeah. WARD: In those accidents, as it was with the Challenger [51-L] accident years later, the causes seem so clear in 20/20 hindsight. Things, as you mention, the hatch that was very difficult to open, that opened inward and made it impossible for the crew to get out when the fire started. The single-gas oxygen system that provided pure oxygen at a very high pressure on the launch pad. Those— MCDIVITT: Yeah. See, we were doing those same things in Gemini and Mercury. We could’ve had exactly the same problem with Gemini and Mercury. We were pressurizing the
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