On this day in history...I've always wondered about the real story behind this incident.
(www.farmersalmanac.com)
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Grissom was a better pilot, commander, and all around a better astronaut than Aldrin, Armstrong, and the other guy on Apollo 11. And he was pissed he'd been continually passed up for the more historic flights. He was also way more outspoken about things than most of the other astronauts, too. Not as bad as Yeager, which is why I think [they] allowed Grissom to participate, but not enough to be "historic" like Aldrin and Armstrong.
However, with all the data and research for the Apollo program now destroyed down to the last nut & bolt, we'll probably never know what exactly happened. It was a sad day, indeed, for our movement when NASA finally admitted they destroyed all the research, documents, schematics, and mishap investigation data from the prior programs. Gemini, Mercury, Saturn, Apollo, and Shuttle Programs...all gone. Not one thing is left, except for what's in the "public" record in the form of books, t.v. reports, eye witness accounts, etc.
Grissom really got screwed throughout his career with NASA. He was the guy who allegedly "blew the hatch" on his Mercury mission, and then he died during his Apollo training. His reputation to most people will always be that he was cursed or a failure when, as you say, he was actually a highly skilled, intelligent, and competent man. He was also a complainer and a shit-stirrer, and I liked that about him. You can hear him complaining in the audio recordings from the morning he died.
It's criminal that we'll never know what he knew about NASA or what they did to him and countless others.