By Brian Arbenz
Was it bad weather, pilot error, or an excessive need to prove critics wrong that caused two astronauts to die 53 years ago near the Saint Louis airport?
In 1966, as the United States space program finally was poised to pass a Soviet Union the U.S. had trailed for eight years, a sense of “Go Fever” gripped the tens of thousands of NASA and contractor workers from Cape Canaveral to Houston.
And on the morning of Feb. 28 that year, another place was central to that eager spirit. In a cold and intermittently snowy and rainy Saint Louis, Mo., the Gemini spacecraft manufacturer McDonnell Aircraft Corp.’s Building 101 contained the Gemini IX.
Inside that craft, astronauts Elliot See and Charles Bassett were to orbit the Earth in May of that year and dock with a drone Agena craft. Bassett would perform a spacewalk.
A docking and spacewalk had to be mastered if we were eventually to go to the
moon. The two maneuvers had not yet been done successfully on any single U.S.
space flight, making Gemini IX a pivotal moment in the moon race. The rookie
astronauts See and Bassett took off from Houston at 7:41 a.m. Central Time Feb.
28 in a T-38 jet piloted by See for a 90-minute flight to Saint Louis’ Lambert
Field airport. The airport is adjacent to McDonnell, where in Building 101,
Bassett and See would undergo mission training inside the Gemini IX.
Fine weather in Houston turned cold and cloudy above Arkansas and by the time the jet was over Missouri, conditions were overcast with rain and snow mixed. Just off the Lambert Field runway where See and Bassett were to land, hundreds of McDonnell workers in Building 101 were busily putting final touches on Gemini IX and assembling the nearby Gemini X, which would fly later in the year.
Gemini IX backup crew members Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan flew the route from Houston to Lambert in a separate T-38 jet.
It was the very picture of a space project proceeding briskly and competently; the flying mastery of astronauts in the air and diligence and organization of workers inside the Building 101 the planes were nearing.
Then, in a hellacious instant, all that skill and savvy gave way to chaos that revealed to the public the imperfect nature of exploring space and of the people who go there.
Foggy conditions dictated that the T-38 planes made a second landing approach, this time using instruments to assure a safe landing.
Stafford, piloting the backup crew plane, started to do just that, then was baffled to observe See’s plane making a turn to approach the runway – without instruments.
Stafford could be heard on radio asking, “Goddammit, where’s HE going?” On his next attempt, Stafford landed safely, with no knowledge of exactly what had resulted from pilot See’s risky maneuver.
Just before Stafford and Cernan landed, a confused ground crew asked the two to identify themselves, unsure which plane was which. Stafford then complained that his radio communications had not been returned by the Lambert tower during an approach made tense by bad weather and low fuel.
The frustration of the twangy-voiced Oklahoma native Stafford continued as his plane came to a halt and he and Cernan opened its canopy, but a minute later all was forgiven.
It was immediately clear that something was up as McDonnell Aircraft founder James McDonnell made the unusual move of coming outside to talk in person to Stafford and Cernan. He somberly informed them that the other plane had crashed into the roof of Building 101, instantly killing Elliot See and Charles Bassett.
Was it bad weather, pilot error, or an excessive need to prove critics wrong that caused two astronauts to die 53 years ago near the Saint Louis airport?
In 1966, as the United States space program finally was poised to pass a Soviet Union the U.S. had trailed for eight years, a sense of “Go Fever” gripped the tens of thousands of NASA and contractor workers from Cape Canaveral to Houston.
And on the morning of Feb. 28 that year, another place was central to that eager spirit. In a cold and intermittently snowy and rainy Saint Louis, Mo., the Gemini spacecraft manufacturer McDonnell Aircraft Corp.’s Building 101 contained the Gemini IX.
Inside that craft, astronauts Elliot See and Charles Bassett were to orbit the Earth in May of that year and dock with a drone Agena craft. Bassett would perform a spacewalk.
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Elliot See (left), and Charles Bassett in their NASA
Gemini IX crew photo, weeks before their deaths.
|
Fine weather in Houston turned cold and cloudy above Arkansas and by the time the jet was over Missouri, conditions were overcast with rain and snow mixed. Just off the Lambert Field runway where See and Bassett were to land, hundreds of McDonnell workers in Building 101 were busily putting final touches on Gemini IX and assembling the nearby Gemini X, which would fly later in the year.
Gemini IX backup crew members Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan flew the route from Houston to Lambert in a separate T-38 jet.
It was the very picture of a space project proceeding briskly and competently; the flying mastery of astronauts in the air and diligence and organization of workers inside the Building 101 the planes were nearing.
Then, in a hellacious instant, all that skill and savvy gave way to chaos that revealed to the public the imperfect nature of exploring space and of the people who go there.
Foggy conditions dictated that the T-38 planes made a second landing approach, this time using instruments to assure a safe landing.
Stafford, piloting the backup crew plane, started to do just that, then was baffled to observe See’s plane making a turn to approach the runway – without instruments.
Stafford could be heard on radio asking, “Goddammit, where’s HE going?” On his next attempt, Stafford landed safely, with no knowledge of exactly what had resulted from pilot See’s risky maneuver.
Just before Stafford and Cernan landed, a confused ground crew asked the two to identify themselves, unsure which plane was which. Stafford then complained that his radio communications had not been returned by the Lambert tower during an approach made tense by bad weather and low fuel.
The frustration of the twangy-voiced Oklahoma native Stafford continued as his plane came to a halt and he and Cernan opened its canopy, but a minute later all was forgiven.
It was immediately clear that something was up as McDonnell Aircraft founder James McDonnell made the unusual move of coming outside to talk in person to Stafford and Cernan. He somberly informed them that the other plane had crashed into the roof of Building 101, instantly killing Elliot See and Charles Bassett.
A NASA dot gov history page said: “The aircraft struck the roof of the building and crashed into a courtyard…. An investigative board chaired by astronaut Alan B. Shepherd attributed the crash to weather and pilot error on See's part in choosing to keep his plane so low.”
The site AmericaSpace dot com described the fatal moment this way: “Descending through the cloud deck, the two jets appeared directly over the centerline of the southwest runway at 8:55 a.m. Both were much too low and traveling much too fast to achieve a landing. Stafford had remained in position on See’s right wing, but decided to ascend and perform a flyaround for another approach. He assumed that See would do the same. Inexplicably, though, See executed a tight turn to reach the runway.
“Years later, the only explanation for why he did this was that he wanted to
beat the backup crew to the ground; an unusual act for a pilot who had earned a
reputation for being both careful and judicious.”
No communications were heard from See or Bassett during the seconds leading up to the disaster. But one last act by See – performed the moment he saw he was dangerously low -- was an historically influential deed. See fired his afterburner engines in a belated attempt to rise fast enough to clear the suddenly visible Building 101, and though this desperate maneuver was too late to save himself or Bassett, the small jump in altitude that resulted caused the T-38 to braze the roof, rather than strike the mid portion of the building. Far from being a minor difference, this last-second alteration in the plane’s path actually saved the Gemini project and President Kennedy’s goal of getting to the moon by the end of the 1960s.
No communications were heard from See or Bassett during the seconds leading up to the disaster. But one last act by See – performed the moment he saw he was dangerously low -- was an historically influential deed. See fired his afterburner engines in a belated attempt to rise fast enough to clear the suddenly visible Building 101, and though this desperate maneuver was too late to save himself or Bassett, the small jump in altitude that resulted caused the T-38 to braze the roof, rather than strike the mid portion of the building. Far from being a minor difference, this last-second alteration in the plane’s path actually saved the Gemini project and President Kennedy’s goal of getting to the moon by the end of the 1960s.
As AmericaSpace dot com explained: “If their T-38 had been a little lower when it hit Building 101, See and Bassett would have ploughed straight into the assembly line, destroying Gemini IX and X and probably killing hundreds of McDonnell’s skilled spacecraft construction workers.”
Project Gemini was indispensable in advancing from the short if dramatic one-person Earth orbital Mercury flights to the complex, eight-to-10-day Apollo moon flights.
No Gemini, no Apollo.
AmericaSpace added: “Miracles seemed far from St Louis during that gloomy, overcast day on which See and Bassett breathed their last, but it is quite remarkable that no one on the ground was seriously injured and their spacecraft, Gemini IX, survived.”
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Tail wreckage of See and
Bassett's T-38 jet.
Behind is the gash made
in the roof.
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AmericaSpace said that though the steep last second climb saved Building 101
and two Gemini craft, workers inside scrambled in fear, diving for cover under
benches as “as a sheet of flame rippled across the corrugated iron roof,” and
fragments from the T-38’s shattered wing flooded into the building, hitting the
Gemini X spacecraft. “Other workers heard noises which they variously described
as resembling sonic booms or the echo of thunder, as well as sudden flashes of
fire and the manifestation of clouds of dust and fumes. Around a dozen
McDonnell employees were injured by ceiling debris, including 19-year-old production
worker Clyde Ethridge, who sustained a serious back injury.”
The most horrible discovery came later in the day, and readers should brace
themselves – Charles Bassett’s severed head was found jammed high in the
rafters of Building 101. Elliot See had been thrown clear of the jet and his
corpse would be found in the parking lot, with his parachute half-opened.See, a Dallas native; and Bassett, who was from Dayton, Ohio, were buried in Arlington four days later. Both were married. See left three children; Bassett left two.
The entire NASA astronaut contingent attended the funeral, but after the day’s reverence, a NASA-military culture of finger pointing after fatal crashes took hold, and speculation about Elliot See’s fitness to fly the T-38 jet continues in space buff circles more than 50 years later.
The AmericaSpace site includes a powerful recollection by future Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham of a day in 1965, published in his memoir titled The All-American Boys. Cunningham wrote that he flew backseat in a T-38 flight with See, who wanted to fly over Taylor Lake in the Houston area and buzz his house, a common astronaut antic. At one stage, with a full load of fuel, AmericaSpace said, See brought the jet to an altitude of 50 feet (15 meters), an airspeed of 170 knots, and no flaps down. “The T-38 with a full load of fuel won’t fly a whole lot slower than 165 knots, even with the flaps down,” Cunningham wrote. “The fact that he was flying way too slow troubled me only to the extent that it could get me killed.”
Cunningham called “Hey, how about half-flaps” and See concurred, dropping half flaps, waving to his wife, and flying away.
That hair-raising episode, AmericaSpace said, “would be brought home to Cunningham with a horrifying sharpness, less than a year later, on 28 February 1966.”
Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, writing about the crash at Building 101, remembers See having the opposite deficiency – flying with too little abandon.
Slayton, the Mercury astronaut grounded until 1975 due to a heart murmur, had the job of choosing crews for NASA flights. In his autobiography, Slayton wrote that Elliot See’s piloting skills, while highly competent, lacked military aggressiveness. He called See’s flying style “old woman-ish,” a double slur disrespecting See, and such scientific geniuses as Grace Hopper, Betty Holberton and Jean Bartik, whose pioneering of the computer, including while they were old, put America on the moon.
Slayton said a sentimental feeling that See deserved a top spot prompted the decision that he command Gemini IX, a choice Slayton later regretted, partly because in that capacity, See piloted the T-38 to Saint Louis.
But NASA legend Neil Armstrong – who like See was chosen an astronaut as a civilian -- defended See’s piloting ability, saying the disaster at Saint Louis involved events too frenetic and unknowable to show any aerial unfitness by him.
Could Slayton’s doubts be partly based on cultural bias, not just fact? Most of See’s 3,900 hours of piloting jets were during his time flying for General Electric, a huge military contractor in the 1960s – this was after his military service in U.S. Merchant Marine and the Naval Reserves Active Duty. Such a civilian flying career can be snickered at by Air Force, Marine and Navy fighter pilots.
St. Louis Magazine, in a 2006 piece on the crash, speculated that Elliot See’s actions at Lambert reflected the opposite of the cautious tentativeness of the “old woman” label.
“A talented civilian test pilot, he knew that completing such a bold maneuver in this weather would have its rewards: His Flight 901 would beat the backup crew to the ground by several minutes—and live to give them hell about it. The 38-year-old father of three still had a little vinegar in him.”
Whether due to too much confidence, or too much Aunt Bea in See’s flying instincts, the consensus is that indeed his piloting decisions led to the crash.
Lily Koppel, in her 2013 book, “The Astronaut Wives Club,” wrote that on Air Force bases and at NASA, personal relations usually can’t survive multiple fatalities attributed to pilot mistakes.
“When you’re in the program, you’re in, in, in,” Jeannie Bassett said in the book. “Then something happens and you’re out. I don’t want to hang around and be the big happy fifth wheel.” She quickly moved with her children to San Francisco after the crash.
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| Charles Bassett's family at his funeral. |
As for Marilyn See, whose husband saved Building 101 and its Geminis, but not himself or his crewmate, she didn’t leave Houston immediately. Koppel wrote, “Marilyn See stuck it out through a year of dirty looks and hushed silences.”
More than 50 years later, much micro-critiquing of Elliot See’s suitability to fly the T-38 continues on corners of the blogosphere.
“I sometimes wonder if Elliot See was aware of the whispers being made about his skills as a pilot (Deke Slayton describing them as ‘Old woman-ish’ i.e., not forceful or aggressive enough),” a blogger who said he is a pilot wrote in 2011 on collectspace dot com. “That could have been in the back of his mind as he made the decision (to land without instruments).”
The blogger described the landing See attempted as “risky,” in bad weather, though often done successfully.
“It requires a significant amount of division of attention to keep the runway in sight, maintain the proper altitude, stay close to the runway, and fly the airplane to a normal touchdown.
“We will never know what was going through the minds of See and Bassett during the last few seconds of their lives. I still consider Elliot See one of my heroes, just like the other astronauts, but he messed up that day. He and Bassett paid the price.”
Wherever Elliot See may be thought of as being – an afterlife, or in the collective memories of space exploration aficionados – it is long past the time to let him, his relatives and ourselves rest by fully appreciating his and Charles Bassett’s contributions to humanity’s greatest endeavor.
We could talk more about how his last act was a split-second decision under duress that raised his jet’s altitude just barely enough to save hundreds of lives and allow the Apollo moon program to continue.
Or, we could just bow to the permanent reality that space exploration is a dangerous business, stop trying to get inside Elliot McKay See’s mind, and let go of a 53-year-old fatal moment in the clouds.
Brian Arbenz, who grew up passionately following space exploration, was 7 when Elliot See and Charles Bassett died.
I think a culture of shitty competition and hubris combined with no instrument flying was the cause. Same as as the Challenger debacle in the 80s and even the Boeing 767 Max that's going on now.
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