Virgil I. ‘Gus’ Grissom

Born: April 3, 1926, Mitchell, Indiana Died: Jan. 27, 1967, NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida

NASA experience: Grissom was one of the seven Mercury astronauts selected by NASA in April 1959. He piloted the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft — the second and final suborbital Mercury test flight — on July 21, 1961. This flight lasted 15 minutes and 37 seconds, attained an altitude of 118 statute miles, and traveled 302 miles downrange from the launch pad at Cape Kennedy. On March 23, 1965, he served as command pilot on the first manned Gemini flight, A three-orbit mission during which the crew accomplished the first orbital trajectory modifications and the first lifting reentry of a manned spacecraft. Subsequent to this assignment, he served as backup command pilot for Gemini 6. Grissom was named to serve as command pilot for the AS-204 mission, the first three-man Apollo flight. Grissom died in the Apollo spacecraft flash fire during a launch pad test.

Military experience: Grissom, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, received his wings in March 1951. He flew 100 combat missions in Korea in F-86s with the 334th Fighter Interceptor Squadron and, upon returning to the United States in 1952, became a jet instructor at Bryan, Texas. In August 1955, he entered the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, to study aeronautical engineering. He attended the Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, in October 1956 and returned to Wright-Patterson in May 1957 as a test pilot assigned to the fighter branch. He logged 4,600 hours’ flying time, 3,500 hours in jet aircraft