Grissom was a World War II and Korean War veteran, mechanical engineer, and USAF test pilot. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with an oak leaf cluster, two NASA Distinguished Service Medals, and, posthumously, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Astronaut Gus Grissom on the recovery aircraft carrier, still wondering what happened following his Mercury-Redstone 4 flight and ordeal in the water. It’s one of the great mysteries of the early...
New Evidence Shows That Gus Grissom Did Not Accidentally Sink His Own ...
Astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom died in a spacecraft fire in 1967, and though his autopsy report was never made public, we do know some of its details.
Grissom’s capsule, Liberty Bell 7, sank after the successful splashdown in the Atlantic, and Grissom came close to drowning. The six Mercury flights from 1961-1963 produced several nerve-racking moments, but Grissom’s was the only one that came close to killing an astronaut.
Commissioned in the U.S. Air Force in 1951, Grissom flew 100 missions in the Korean War, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with cluster. He was a test pilot and flying instructor until 1959, when he was selected as one of the original seven astronauts for Project Mercury.
Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom was one of NASA's first seven astronauts, flew the first crewed Gemini mission, and was named as commander for the first Apollo flight.
Purdue engineering alumnus Gus Grissom was one of NASA’s first seven astronauts — the legendary Mercury Seven — introduced . On , Grissom became the second American to fly in space during his Liberty Bell 7 flight as part of the Mercury program.