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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.
“Borman”5 pages
Johnson Space Center Oral History Project James A. McDivitt 29 June 1999 12-61 the solid rocket? No, there wasn’t anybody smart enough to know anything about that! And I think the press does the country a terrible disservice on a lot of occasions. A good service at other times. But sometimes they just got out of control. WARD: Getting back to the effects of the fire. It—you mentioned that you were the backup crew to Grissom, White, and Chaffee. After the fire, a lot of changes were made in crew assignments. There were hardware problems that changed that. Talk a little bit about what happened to the flow, the assignment of the crews, and how you ended up next on Apollo 9. MCDIVITT: Okay. Well, you know, there was even a—[Recorder turned off]. WARD: Jim, we were talking about the effect that the Apollo fire had and some of the hardware problems with—the vehicle had and crew assignments and the juggling of crew assignments, and how you ended up then next on the Apollo 9 mission. MCDIVITT: Sure. Yeah. Well, it’s kind of complicated. You know, when I was the backup commander of the first Apollo mission, there was a second Block I Apollo mission scheduled also. It was crewed by Wally and his crew as a prime crew, and I don’t even remember who the backup crew was. And one day they were doing a pressure test on the service module for that vehicle, and—unmanned, of course, it was done in a pit—and it blew up! So, all of a sudden we found ourselves without two Block I spacecraft. Just one Block I spacecraft. At that time, I was taken off of being commander of the backup crew and put on as prime crew on the first lunar module flight. Wally Schirra’s crew was moved from being prime crew on this Block I spacecraft over to backup crew on Gus’s flight. That was the first
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