Wally Schirra

• 1. Introduction

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  Wally Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of America's first crewed space programs: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. That distinction alone would be enough to earn him a place in history. But the full arc of his life reaches much further, from barnstorming county fairs in New Jersey to co-anchoring live Moon landing coverage alongside Walter Cronkite.

  Schirra's father flew bombing and reconnaissance missions over Germany in World War I, then performed as a barnstormer afterward. His mother did wing walking stunts at the same fairs. The sky was never a mystery to the boy who grew up in Oradell, New Jersey. What remains less obvious is how a man shaped by such an adventurous family came to personify precision, engineering discipline, and a stubborn streak that would eventually put him at odds with NASA's Mission Control.

  How did Schirra move from dogfights over Korea to commanding the first mission that broadcast live television from a crewed spacecraft? What drove him to refuse a direct order from Mission Control during reentry? And what did he do with the rest of a life that extended more than three decades beyond his last spaceflight? Those questions are what this documentary will try to answer.

• 2. Flying Roots

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  Walter Marty Schirra Jr. was born on the 12th of March 1923, in Hackensack, New Jersey. His grandfather Adam Schirra had emigrated from Bavaria with his wife Josephina. His father, Walter M. Schirra Sr., was born in Philadelphia in 1893 and flew for the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War I before taking up barnstorming. His mother, Florence Shillito Schirra, born in 1898, performed wing walking stunts alongside him.

  Wally Jr. grew up in Oradell, where he was a First Class Scout in Boy Scout Troop 36. He graduated from Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey, in June 1940 and enrolled at the Newark College of Engineering, joining the ROTC and the Sigma Pi fraternity. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he decided to apply to a service academy. His father pushed for West Point. Schirra chose the Naval Academy instead.

  He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1945 after three years rather than four, because the Academy had shortened its curriculum for wartime. He was commissioned as an ensign on the 6th of June 1945 and served during the final months of World War II aboard a large cruiser before the Japanese surrender ended the fighting.

• 3. Combat and Test Flying

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  Schirra received his naval aviator wings in 1948 and joined Fighter Squadron 71 at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, flying the F8F Bearcat before transitioning to jets. When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, he was deployed to the Mediterranean aboard an aircraft carrier. He applied for an exchange program with the U.S. Air Force specifically to gain combat experience and trained on the F-84 Thunderjet.

  His first posting was with the 154th Fighter-Bomber Squadron at Itazuke Air Force Base in Japan. As U.S. troops pushed northward, the squadron moved to a base in Daegu. Over an eight-month deployment, Schirra flew 90 combat missions and shot down two MiG-15s. He also received a Distinguished Flying Cross for escorting B-29 bombers during that war.

  After Korea, he became a test pilot at Naval Ordnance Test Station China Lake in California. There, he was the first pilot to fly with and fire the Sidewinder missile. His path through test aviation eventually led to the Naval Test Pilot School in 1958, where he was in Class 20 alongside Jim Lovell and Pete Conrad, both future astronauts. After graduating, he went to Naval Air Station Patuxent River to evaluate whether the F4H Phantom could serve as a carrier-based aircraft.

• 4. Mercury and Sigma 7

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  In February 1959, Schirra was among 110 military test pilots nominated as candidates for Project Mercury. By April 1959, he was one of the seven selected. His responsibilities during the program's development included life-support systems and the pressurized flight suit. He also worked alongside John Glenn on capsule design, and flew an F-106 Delta Dart chase plane during Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 mission.

  Schirra was originally assigned as backup to Deke Slayton for the second orbital Mercury flight, but Slayton was grounded for a heart condition and replaced by Scott Carpenter. Schirra moved to the third orbital slot. His spacecraft, which he named Sigma 7, lifted off at 7:15 in the morning on the 3rd of October 1962.

  Early in the flight, a minor trajectory deviation corrected itself, and Sigma 7 achieved orbit. During the mission, Schirra demonstrated manual maneuvering using the reaction control system, a direct response to navigation problems that had cropped up during Carpenter's Aurora 7 flight. His suit temperatures climbed as high as 32 degrees Celsius before he manually adjusted the cooling system. He also tested his ability to operate controls in zero gravity without sight.

  After six orbits, he manually aligned the spacecraft over Africa and performed retrofire. Sigma 7 landed just 5 miles from the recovery carrier in the central Pacific. Once on deck, Schirra opened the explosive hatch himself, taking a significant bruise in the process. That bruise mattered: it demonstrated that Gus Grissom had not intentionally opened his hatch on Liberty Bell 7. On the 16th of October, Schirra and his family met President Kennedy at the White House.

• 5. The Rendezvous Mission

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  Gemini 6 was originally designed to perform the first orbital docking with an Agena target vehicle. On the 25th of October 1965, the Agena exploded during its launch into orbit while Schirra and Tom Stafford sat waiting in their spacecraft. Program managers improvised. They renamed the mission Gemini 6A and redirected it to attempt a rendezvous with Gemini 7, which would be crewed by Frank Borman and Jim Lovell.

  Gemini 7 launched on the 4th of December 1965. When Gemini 6A tried to follow on December 12th, its engines shut down less than two seconds after ignition. Protocol called for both astronauts to eject. Schirra chose not to activate their ejection seats, calculating that the rocket had not actually lifted off. That decision saved both men from probable injuries and preserved the mission. Gemini 6A successfully launched on December 15th.

  After five hours of flight, Gemini 6A rendezvoused with Gemini 7. The two spacecraft maneuvered to within one foot of each other and held that position for five hours. This was the first space rendezvous in history. Gemini 6A deorbited on the 16th of December and was recovered in the Atlantic, southeast of Cape Canaveral.

  During the mission, Schirra smuggled a four-hole Hohner harmonica aboard and played "Jingle Bells," with Stafford accompanying him on sleigh bells. He preceded the performance by reporting a mock UFO sighting to flight controllers, implying Santa Claus was in orbit.

• 6. Apollo 7 and the Cold War with Mission Control

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  In mid-1966, Schirra was assigned to command a three-man Apollo crew with Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham. On the 27th of January 1967, Schirra's crew was conducting tests in the command module when Gus Grissom and his crew were killed in a fire during a test at the launch pad. Schirra's crew became the prime crew for the first crewed Apollo flight, designated Apollo 7, with launch delayed until the fall of 1968 so safety improvements could be made to the Command Module.

  Schirra had strong feelings about who should oversee the launch. He trusted Guenter Wendt, a McDonnell Aircraft employee, as pad leader, and when North American Aviation took over the Apollo contract and Wendt lost that role, Schirra lobbied Deke Slayton and North American's launch operations manager Bastian "Buzz" Hello until Wendt was hired back for Apollo 7. Wendt went on to serve as pad leader through the rest of Apollo, through Skylab, and into the Space Shuttle program.

  Apollo 7 launched on the 11th of October 1968. Schirra became the first person to fly in space three times. On the second day of the mission, the crew transmitted the first live television pictures publicly broadcast from inside a crewed spacecraft. But Schirra had developed a head cold, which he passed to Eisele. Worried about congestion inside a sealed spacesuit during reentry, Schirra told Mission Control they would not be wearing their helmets. Chris Kraft and Deke Slayton asked them to reconsider. Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham refused and performed reentry without helmets anyway. Apollo 7 landed southeast of Bermuda on the 22nd of October 1968.

• 7. Life After the Astronaut Corps

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  Schirra's cold medicine from Apollo 7 had an unexpected postscript. The flight surgeon had prescribed a combination of pseudoephedrine and triprolidine antihistamine. When that combination later became available over the counter under the brand name Actifed, the company hired Schirra as a television spokesman, trading directly on the notoriety of his in-flight cold.

  From 1969 to 1975, he served as a consultant to CBS News, joining Walter Cronkite to co-anchor coverage of all seven Moon landing missions, beginning with Apollo 11, where Arthur C. Clarke also joined the broadcast, and including Apollo 13.

  His business activities were wide-ranging. He became president and a director of Regency Investors Incorporated, then left to form Environmental Control Company, where he served as chairman and chief executive from 1970 to 1973. After that company merged with SERNCO Incorporated, he eventually became chairman of the board. He also worked on an Alaskan oil pipeline, served on an advisory board for U.S. national parks in the Department of the Interior from 1973 to 1985, and was a board member at companies including Kimberly-Clark and Johns-Manville Corporation.

  In January 1979, he founded Schirra Enterprises. In 1984, he was among the surviving Mercury astronauts who established what is now called the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which awards college scholarships to science and engineering students. His autobiography, Schirra's Space, written with Richard N. Billings, appeared in 1988. His last authored work was a contribution to the 2007 book In the Shadow of the Moon.

  Schirra died on the 3rd of May 2007, of a heart attack while being treated for abdominal cancer at Scripps Green Hospital in San Diego. He was 84 years old. A memorial service was held on the 22nd of May at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, closing with a three-volley salute and a flyover by three F/A-18s. His ashes were committed to the sea on the 11th of February 2008.