APOLLO 1 – The Forgotten First NASA Disaster

Astronauts Roger Chaffee, Ed White, and Gus Grissom in Apollo 1, 1967
Astronauts Roger Chaffee, Ed White, and Gus Grissom in Apollo 1, 1967

Everyone remembers the Challenger and Columbia Space Shuttle disasters. We all know the famous Apollo 11 Moon landing and the historic first steps of Neil Armstrong in 1969.  But few outside NASA recall the Apollo 1 Tragedy that happened just 2 years earlier.  On January 27, 1967, during a launch rehearsal at Cape Kennedy, a freak flash fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module with 3 astronauts sealed on board. The three men died inside, despite the best efforts of the launch crew to save them.  But how could this have happened on a simple practice run?

NASA had an intimidating goal before it, set by President Kennedy in 1961, “to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth” by the end of the decade. Earlier Mercury and Gemini flights were the first steps toward meeting that challenge. Apollo would take 3 astronauts all the way to the moon’s surface and back.

This first manned Apollo mission, designated AS-204, would be just an Earth-orbiting test flight.

The Commander was Virgil “Gus” Grissom, an Air Force veteran, mechanical engineer and one of NASA’s first Mercury Seven Astronauts. He was America’s 2nd person in space in 1961, riding aboard the Liberty Bell 7. Grissom then went on to successfully command Gemini 3, the first 2-man Gemini flight, before being selected by NASA for Apollo 1.

Another veteran astronaut, Ed White, was also chosen.  An Air Force Lt. Colonel test pilot, he was the 1st American to make a spacewalk, on Gemini 4 in 1965. The images of White floating above the curved blue Earth, linked by a skinny tether to the spacecraft are unforgettable, as are his words, “I’m coming back in, and it’s the saddest moment of my life.”

The third and last astronaut was Roger Chaffee a seasoned Navy lieutenant commander. Although a rookie in spaceflight, he had spent years supporting the Gemini program since 1963, including CapCom (Capsule Communications) on Gemini 4. He would now finally be getting his first chance to fly in space after five years of waiting.

Two weeks earlier, all 3 astronauts kissed their wives goodbye, hugged their kids, and left Houston for Cape Kennedy in Florida.  They would be taking part in a pre-launch test, within the Command Module mounted atop an unfueled Saturn 1B rocket on launch pad 34. Engineering changes were still in progress as NASA prepared for the test. The plan was to go through the entire countdown sequence.

On Friday, January 27th, the 3 astronauts climbed into their familiar silver space suits.

At 1 pm, they rode out to the launch tower and took the elevator to the top.  With the help of the launch crew, they climbed into their capsule.  The hatch was then sealed with a heavy ‘thud.’ A number of technical  problems cropped up immediately, which delayed the countdown for 4 hours.  Finally, a failure in communications forced a hold in the count at 5:40 p.m.  A frustrated Grissom shouted through the static, “How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t talk between two buildings?”

By 6:31 pm, Launch Control was ready to pick up the countdown … when ground instruments showed an electrical surge in the AC voltage readings, possibly indicating a short-circuit in the capsule.  Four seconds later came frightening words from the Command Module over the speakers, almost casually from Chaffee: “I smell fire.”

Two seconds later, White reports louder, “We’ve got a fire in the cockpit.” The fire spreads throughout the small cabin in a matter of seconds. Chaffee shouts this time, “We have a bad fire!” followed by all three shouting as they struggled to get out. The last communication sadly ends 17 seconds after the start of the fire, followed by loss of all capsule telemetry.

The Apollo 1 hatch opened inward and was closed by several latches.  It was held tight by higher interior pressure and required venting before the hatch could be opened. It took a minute and a half to get the hatch open under ideal conditions.  Ed White, in the center seat, had to reach above and behind his shoulders to use a ratchet that would release the first of a series of latches. White made part of a turn with the ratchet before he was overcome by smoke.

Launch technicians ran towards the sealed command module as the capsule ruptured!

White flames and thick smoke billowed out, filling the enclosed entry room. Some feared the fire might set off the launch escape rocket attached atop Apollo’s nose. This might then ignite the launch tower. Many technicians ran, but others grabbed extinguishers and tried to rescue the astronauts. The intense heat and smoke kept forcing them back, but finally after 5 minutes, they opened the hatch. Firemen arrived within 3 minutes and doctors soon afterwards. Unfortunately, it was too late … the 3 astronauts had died.

The entire NASA community was in shock.  There had been NO fatalities during Mercury & Gemini. NASA impounded everything at the launch pad. A medical board eventually determined that the 3 astronauts died of asphyxia, with burns as a contributing factor. Fire had destroyed 70% of Grissom’s spacesuit, 20% of White’s and 15% of Chaffee’s. Doctors treated 27 men at the launch tower for smoke inhalation.

A NASA review board found a stray spark from damaged wires near Grissom’s seat started the fire. Fed by flammable materials such as nylon netting and foam pads, the blaze spread easily.  Because the cabin had been filled with 100% oxygen for many hours, the gas permeated all the material in the cabin.  The fire spread rapidly and the trapped astronauts had little chance of getting the hatch open.

Burnt interior of the Apollo 1 capsule
Burnt interior of the Apollo 1 capsule, 1967

The three men had perished probably within the first minute. Ed White, in the center seat, was found with his arms over his head as he struggled with the hatch.  And that hatch turned out to be too difficult to open in an emergency. The astronauts struggled in vain to crack the inward-opening door with the pressure inside the spacecraft higher.

The exhaustive investigation postponed any manned launch of the Saturn for nearly a year.

A number of changes were instigated in the Apollo program, including designing: a) a new hatch which opened outward and could be operated quickly in a matter of seconds, b) removing much of the flammable material and replacing it with self-extinguishing components, c) using a nitrogen-oxygen mixture instead of pure O2 at launch.

In the end, the resulting changes made the Apollo Command Module a highly reliable spacecraft.  With the exception of Apollo 13’s service module failure, it helped make the six Moon missions almost routine. The eventual success of the Apollo program is a tribute to Grissom, White, and Chaffee, whose tragic loss was not in vain.  Lessons learned from Apollo 1 stretch all the way to the Space Shuttle program, the International Space Station (ISS), and SpaceX.

The AS-204 mission was officially names “Apollo 1” in honor of the three astronauts.  NASA honors their sacrifice every January in an annual Day of Remembrance, which also includes the Challenger 1986 and Columbia 2003 Space Shuttle crews. An exhibit honoring the Apollo 1 crew opened at the Kennedy Space Center in 2017, with a special ceremony honoring the three astronauts on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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Podcast: Razor Tojo – Japan’s Adolf Hitler

 

Contrary to popular myth, Japan’s version of Adolf Hitler was not the Emperor Hirohito, but rather its infamous Minister of War, Hideki Razor Tojo. But who was this ruthless and powerful man so few outside Japan know of?  He rose to power in the 1930’s, began World War II in the Pacific, and was responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people and the Allies.

Japanese War Minister Hideki Razor Tojo
Japanese War Minister Hideki Razor Tojo
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Podcast: Five Reasons the Johnstown Flood Disaster should never have happened

The terrible Johnstown Flood of 1889 was more of a man-made Tsunami.  Yes, there was flooding at first. The ‘Storm of the Century‘ rains arrived in the deep Pennsylvania valley on Memorial Day, 1889. The two rivers that flanked the steel mill town began to swell.  But it wasn’t until the aging South Fork Dam burst that the REAL tragedy occurred. The dam, owned by a wealthy country club, held back the waters of Lake Conemaugh, just14 miles upriver from the unsuspecting people of Johnstown.

Depiction of the Johnstown Flood and Stone Bridge Fire, 1889
Depiction of the Johnstown Flood and Stone Bridge Fire, 1889
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Welcome to Centralia – the Town that Burned from Beneath

Centralia mine fire
Mine Fire erupts from Route 61 in Centralia, PA

If you drive north on Route 61 in northeastern Pennsylvania, U.S., you will come across an innocent looking detour at the top of a low mountain.  Thinking nothing of it, drivers follow the signs around something unseen, perhaps road construction up ahead or a bridge repair.  Upon closer inspection however, it seems to be a permanent closure of the road to Centralia. 

You’re soon back on the highway and greeted by an eerie site, the ghost town that is Centralia, Pennsylvania.  Vacant, weed-filled lots occupy a grid of empty streets.  Sidewalks remain, but all the houses are gone.  Here and there, tufts of grey smoke appear to be coming from the earth itself. In some cases, a ring of chain link fences circle the smoke holes.

What on earth could have caused the abandonment and demolition of an entire town?

In began innocuously enough in May 1962, when a careless trash fire was started in a landfill that was also an abandoned, coal strip mine. The fire department doused the pit with water for hours and they thought the fire was out.  Unfortunately, it was not. This is the Pennsylvania Coal Region, once home to hundreds of deep anthracite mines, now largely abandoned. The fire snaked underground along old coal veins, sucking in air and venting hot smoke up through cracks in the earth. 

Eventually, it followed those coal veins and slowly crept underneath quiet Centralia itself. The fire began venting poisonous gases up through the basements of homes and businesses.  With a slow horror, residents realized that the underground fire had reached their town.  Worse still, it could not be extinguished, or even burn itself out in the near future — not until ALL the coal under the mountain was removed or consumed.

The fire slowly worked its way under row after row of family homes and businesses. Vent holes of white smoke appeared in backyards. The threat of house fires, asphyxiation, and carbon monoxide poisoning became a daily fact of life. For the next two decades, the town attempted to battle the fire. The fire company flushed the mine holes with rivers of water. They excavated the burning veins and dug trenches. The state back-filling the vent holes to try and suffocate it. They dug AGAIN and AGAIN in an vain attempt to find the boundaries of the fire.

By the 1980s, the fire had affected over 200 acres of Centralia. Residents had to abandon their homes as carbon monoxide had reached life threatening levels inside.  A study concluded that the fire could burn for another 100 years or more and spread over 3,700 acres of the mountain.  The state government eventually became involved and declared Centralia municipalis non grata. Route 61 had to be permanently detoured around the borough.

Centralia was slowly abandoned, house by house, street by street.

Properties were condemned, citizens relocated, and their homes demolished, all costing about $42 million. The town hoped to dig a 500-foot deep trench completely across the hilltop on which Centralia sat, holding back the fire and saving half the town. To no one’s surprise, the expensive trench was never dug. A few die hard residents remained in their homes, their hopes pinned on continued efforts to contain the blaze. 

Ironically today, the Centralia Fire Department is the only modern building still remaining, along with two houses. The Assumption BVM Church sits up on the mountain side overlooking the ghost town.  522 homes are gone in all.  The hillsides are peppered with holes spewing noxious gases.  Large cracks and pits make most streets through town undrivable. Though there are no visible flames, you can feel the heat radiating from the breaches in the earth.  Tall metal pipes emerge from the ground about 8 feet tall, ringed by small protective fences. In winter, like the geysers at Yellowstone National Park, snow never sticks because the ground is too warm around the smoke vents. 

Over 62 years and 42 million dollars later, the fire still burns on several fronts underneath Centralia and the surrounding mountain.  But the cracked sidewalks, vacant streets and empty, weed-filled plots remain, along with a handful of aging holdouts.  By 2000, the fire had moved into Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery, with white smoke eerily wafting up around the silent, grey tombstones.  In 2004, the PA Department of Environmental Protection explicitly discouraged visitors from stopping in and exploring Centralia.

Graffiti Highway in Centralia, PA
Graffiti Highway in Centralia, PA before being buried.

Curious people like myself irresistibly come anyway, renaming it Helltown USA, drawn to the eerie, empty streets, peppered with fissures oozing white smoke.  Thousands of visitors covered the old road into town with graphic graffiti becoming Graffiti Highway.  A PBS Documentary on the mine fire was made in 1982, interviewing several Centralia residents. In 2013, the seven remaining elderly residents reached an agreement with the state allowing them to remain in their beloved homes until they died.  By 2020 only 5 remained. That same year, Graffiti Highway was sadly covered with a thick layer of dirt, ending a decades-long attraction.

I grew up just a few miles from Centralia, Pennsylvania. As a young boy, I witnessed the citizens rebellion against the state, the sad evacuations of homes, and the slow demolition of this quaint little mountain town. The poor residents certainly did not deserve this unfortunate end.  But when mankind plays recklessly with nature’s resources, leaving a hazardous mess behind, nature has a way of fighting back.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS
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Orson Welles’ 1938 Halloween Radio Play Panicked America

Headline of War of the Worlds radio play panic
Headline of War of the Worlds radio play panic. 1938

Actor and producer Orson Welles caused a nationwide panic in the U.S. when he broadcast his “War of the Worlds” radio play on Sunday night, October 30, 1938.  It was so realistic, listeners who tuned in late after 8:00 PM thought they were hearing horrifying news accounts of an actual Martian invasion of Earth! There was no television yet in the 1930s. 

Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater Company decided to present a modernized version of H.G. Wells’ classic science fiction novel on CBS Radio. It would be take place in the present, however, rather than last century.  His Mercury Theatre on the Air had already put on successful radio plays of Julius Caesar and Oliver Twist.  Welles was already internationally famous in radio as the sinister baritone voice of “The Shadow,” a hit mystery program.

Sunday evenings in the 1930’s were prime-time in Radio’s Golden Age of listeners.  Millions of Americans had their large console radios tuned in, with the entire family gathered around. If you happened to tune in late and miss the introduction of the play, Welles’ program began innocently enough, with peppy Big Band dance music, supposedly from the Hotel Park Plaza in New York City.

But then an announcer broke in to report that a college professor watching at an observatory had detected strange explosions on the red planet Mars, earth’s neighbor. This was followed by another yet urgent interruption in which listeners were told a large meteor had just crashed into a farm in Grovers Mills, New Jersey near Princeton!  Then came more infuriating dance music as the audience listened and waited.

Soon, a breathless announcer claimed to be at the crash site, along with the National Guard.  He described in great detail a metallic, cylindrical Spaceship with a hideous Martian emerging!!

The Martian War Machine then fired a “heat-ray” disintegrating the reporter and all 7,000 National Guardsman!  The radio went deadly silent for an entire minute.  Next, another voice somberly announced the deaths in Grover’s Mill and reported that other “Martian cylinders” were now landing in Chicago, Buffalo and St. Louis!  More National Guard troops were being deployed. Oh my God! listeners thought,  IT’S AN INVASION!  The radio actors were VERY good at their job, portraying terrified announcers and using plenty of creepy alien sound effects. Announcers reported widespread panic had broken out in all major US cities, with thousands of families desperately trying to flee the oncoming Martian havoc.

In fact, that’s what was exactly happening. The United States was already on nervous edge, with news of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Army threatening yet another world war in Europe.  As many as a million radio listeners believed that a Real Martian Invasion was actually occurring. Panic broke out across the country with terrified families jamming the highways to escape the cities, calling confused police departments and begging for gas masks.  Others showed up with rifles and shotguns, ready to fight and defend America against the Martians. 

Phones began ringing constantly at the CBS Radio Studio in New York City.  When news of the real-life panic reached Welles in the studio, he was shocked.  He personally went on the air and broke into the show to remind listeners that it was just a radio play, and that none of it was real.  The spell was broken for those listening.  For those already fleeing, the news would slowly trickle in. Can you imagine the reaction?  As word reached the streets, confused and beleaguered Americans turned around and went back to their homes.

Orson Welles and the Press following War or the Worlds Radio Play
Orson Welles with the Press following War or the Worlds Radio Play panic. 1938

That night, mayors across America wanted Welles’ head and the police wanted him arrested. They stormed the CBS Radio Studio in Manhattan wanting to “punch him in the kisser.”  The entire cast and producers sneaked out of the building via a rear exit.  The next day (Halloween by chance), a bewildered-looking Orson Welles held a quick press conference.  He stated he never had any intention of deceiving people or inciting a panic.  He was just trying to put on a good show for his loyal audience.  In fact, the arrogant and ego-centric Welles was quite thrilled with the panic he caused and soaked up the national attention.

As the saying goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity.  The fame helped land young Orson Welles a lucrative movie contract in Hollywood, California.  He soon left New York and radio behind for a lucrative career in motion pictures.  Say what you will of the man, you cannot deny his talent.  Just two years later, he directed, co-wrote, produced, and starred in the Academy Award winning movie Citizen Kane.  To this day it is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made.  It received nine Oscar nominations and won him an award for Best Screenplay.  We was quite the skilled story teller and went on to make 17 more films.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Podcast: The Tragic Fate of the SS St. Louis Jewish Refugees

In May 1939, 937 anxious Jewish refugees fled the horrors of Nazi Germany, aboard an ocean liner named the SS St. Louis. Most were German citizens, with Jews from other countries like Poland and Austria. The passengers planned to reach Cuba first, then ultimately seek sanctuary the United States.  They would tragically never make it.

Two Jewish children aboard the SS St. Louis in Havana
Two Jewish children aboard the SS St. Louis in Havana, Cuba
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Podcast: The American Legacy of the Cherokee Trail of Tears

General Andrew Jackson won the nasty election of 1828 and was elected President of the United States.  At this time, over 125,000 Native Americans still occupied millions of acres in the American southeast – land they had lived on for generations.  In a little over a decade, thanks the Indian Removal Act, there would be few left alive anywhere east of the Mississippi River.  Many would have died along the Trail of Tears.

Depiction of the Cherokee Trail of Tears
Depiction of the Cherokee Trail of Tears
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Why Does The Middle East Have Straight Line Borders?!

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Map of the Middle East Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916
Map of the Middle East Sykes-Picot Agreement,
1916

Drawing the Middle East’s modern borders on a map with a ruler certainly seemed simple. Perhaps that’s why the lines, set in 1916 by Englishman Sir Mark Sykes and Frenchman Francois Georges-Picot were straight ones. The infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement was a pact between Great Britain and France, in the middle of World War I (with the Russia Empire’s blessing). With it, they planned to completely dismember the centuries-old Ottoman Empire. It led to the division of the Turkish-held Middle East into 5 French and British-administered countries – today’s Syria, Lebanon, Israel (then called Palestine), Jordan and Iraq.  During World War I, the Turks had allied themselves with Germany and Austria-Hungary and basically faced a war on three fronts.

Sykes & Picot were both colonial aristocrats who believed in the quaint notion that Second & Third World counties were incapable of self-rule, and far better living under their European masters.  They had carved up African colonies in a similar fashion.  Plus the warring sides of World War I were still oblivious to the fact that the Middle East sat upon the largest hidden oil reserves in the world. At the time, all the two allied nations desired was open shipping routes to Russia (via Istanbul), and a secure Suez Canal connection through the deserts of Egypt to India. 

So the two men literally drew straight lines on a map, dividing up territory ruled by the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years into brand new countries. Syria and Lebanon, which would be under French control in the north. Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine which would be under British control in the south.  Beneath them all sat all of Arab controlled Saudi Arabia.  Following the end of World War I in 1918, the deed was done and signed into the 1919 Versailles Treaty between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire.

Their hastily negotiated agreement continues to have profound ripple effects to this day.

For you see, the Sykes-Picot Agreement had MANY problems. The first lay in those damn straight lines, which failed to take into account any sectarian, tribal, or ethnic divisions. Sykes & Picot envisioned Lebanon as a Christian haven, Palestine with a Jewish community, and Syria, Jordan & Iraq with the region’s Muslims. That of course never happened. Old racism and hatreds, suppressed for decades under strict Ottoman rule, came boiling to the surface without Turkish control.

Second, the agreement was made with NO Arab input of any kind … NONE.  AND it ignored a promise Britain made to the Arabs that if they sided with them, and rebelled against the Turks in World War I, they would finally gain their independence. When independence did not materialize after the war, Arab politics gradually shifted from constitutional parliaments to militant kingdoms. This led to the rise of dictatorial regimes that dominated many Arab countries for decades, to this very day.

During World War I, Britain was willing to recognize and support Arab independence. The Arabs fulfilled their part of the agreement and revolted against the Turks, fueled in part by the contribution of famous British archaeologist Lieutenant TE Lawrence, aka “Lawrence of Arabia.”  Britain, however, did not live up to its side of the deal. Lawrence later wrote that the Arab Revolt was useful, as it marched in line with Britain’s aims, i.e. the break-up of the vast Ottoman Empire. But, he also warned the Arab tribes were even less stable than the Turks, a ‘tissue of small, jealous principalities, incapable of long term cohesion.’

Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot
Englishman Sir Mark Sykes and Frenchman Francois Georges-Picot

During the 1800’s, the Ottoman Sultan had taken a hands-off approach to governing the Middle East, and did little to promote progress. At the first sign of any tribal identity, the Turks beheaded the movement’s insolent leaders.   The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a blatantly imperialistic solution. It took no account of the wishes of the people, ignored Arab and Kurdish boundaries, and provoked conflicts which continue to plague the region to this day. No other region on earth has seen so many border wars, civil wars and deadly coups in recent decades.

In 1918, World War I finally came to an end with a victory for the Allies.

The Ottoman Empire was finally defeated by the Allies, carved up like a tired bull, and split among the victors in the1920 Treaty of Sevres. Instead of the nation-states Britain & France had promised the Arabs, the victors divided the Middle East into countries which, because of those damn straight lines, are still among the most difficult to govern on earth. The strains unleashed on the Arab World after World War I remain as acute as ever, 100 years later.

The Middle East still finds itself living with a 1916 map that ignored the region’s Islamic and ethnic realities – there were Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, Muslims and Jews. The nations and borders are still seen today as illegitimate by many of their own governments and citizens. World War I spilled over in World War II with little change to the Middle East.  This was followed by: the founding of Israel in 1948, the race for Arab oil in Iraq, 3 Egypt-Israeli wars, countless Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish conflicts, 2 Iraq-Iran wars, 2 Persian Gulf Wars, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise and fall of Al-qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas. 

With the exception of the 1978 Camp David Egypt-Israeli Peace Accords, negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, no lasting peace in the Middle East has stuck.  The result has been seemingly unending conflicts amongst Arab nations, Arab factions, and with Arab neighbor Israel, that have yet to come to an end, a century later.  Plus they show no signs of ceasing any time soon. All due to a few straight lines drawn on a paper map by two European men, over a hundred years ago.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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The Mariana Trench – a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

The bathyscaphe Trieste in the Mariana Trench, 1960.
Depiction of the bathyscaphe Trieste in the Mariana Trench, 1960

 A decade before the Apollo Moon Missions, two aquanauts, traveled to the last unexplored place on Earth, the deepest point under all the Earth’s oceans.  On 23 January 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, in the bathyscaphe Trieste, descended down to the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, 7 miles, (11 km) beneath the water surface.

The lowest point on our planet is deep underwater, in the western Pacific Ocean near the island of Guam. It’s here where converging geological plates crash together, forcing one plate down beneath the other, forming the formidable Mariana Trench. The deepest portion, at nearly 11,000 meters was discovered in 1951 by the British survey ship Challenger, hence the name “Challenger Deep.”

The distance between the surface and the bottom of the trench is greater than the height of Mount Everest.

The Trieste bathyscaphe was named after the Italian city of its birth.  A bathyscaphe (deep boat) is a type of mini-sub with a bathysphere attached to the bottom for piloting and observation. Auguste Piccard, a visionary Swiss inventor and aeronaut designed the Trieste, a precursor to today’s modern submersibles. Piccard was already famous for setting the record for the highest altitude balloon flight ever in 1932.

Trieste’s two-man crew would be working inside a 6.5 foot (2 meter) wide pressure sphere on the underside of the submersible. To withstand the intense pressure at the bottom of Challenger Deep [8 tons per square inch!], the bathysphere’s walls were 5 inches (8 cm) thick. To see outside, the crew would rely on a single window made of a solid cone of Plexiglas.

The rest of the nearly 60-foot (18-meter) long Trieste was primarily a 50 ft. tank. It was filled with 33,350 gallons (126,240 liters) of gasoline for buoyancy, along with nine tons of iron pellets as ballast to weigh it down. (Gasoline is more buoyant than water and resistant to compression.)  The Trieste also had the advantage of being controlled by the pilot and didn’t need to be tethered to any surface ship. Piccard developed an ingenious method to control the buoyancy, using both the gasoline and pellets.

Why partake on such a dangerous mission?

During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy realized the ocean depths could be exploited for military advantages against the Soviets.  The Office of Naval Research purchased the Trieste in 1958 and hired Auguste’s son, Jacques, as consultant.  The dive was not just about setting a new record, the Navy wanted to prove the feasibility of human exploration at such extreme depths.

Piccard’s radical design would be put to the test in January 1960 at the deepest place on Earth, with none other than his 38-year-old son Jacques as one of the 2 crew.   So the U.S. Navy carried the small sub to the Pacific for its historic dive into the Mariana Trench.  31-year-old oceanographer Don Walsh, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant, would be the other “aquanaut.”

Floating over the trench, the 2 men waved one last time to the crew of the mother ship. They then climbed down through the Trieste, into the bathysphere underneath.  It took 4 hours and 48 minutes to drop to the very bottom of the Challenger Deep at a rate of about a yard (0.9 m) a second. One can only imagine the creeping fear and tension the 2 men experienced. They descended slowly and silently into the pitch-black darkness, the bathysphere getting progressively colder and colder.

The Trieste’s hull could buckle at any moment from the extreme pressure, or it might violently explode without warning.

Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh inside the Trieste, 1960
Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh inside the Trieste bathysphere, 1960

As if to highlight the peril, after passing 27,000 feet (9,000 meters) the outer window pane cracked, violently shaking the entire sphere! Should they abort?  But since no leaks or pressure drop occurred, the brave men decided to continue their decent.  Throughout much of the trip, they lost contact with their mother ship on the  surface. Nevertheless, Piccard and Walsh successfully reached the bottom of the trench at a depth of 7 miles.

The floor of Challenger Deep was a fine, snuff-colored, oozy silt made of microscopic algae known as diatoms. The explorers were shocked to see jellyfish, shrimp-like creatures, and a couple of small white flatfish, proving that some life could withstand the extreme depths. Unfortunately, they carried no external camera and one of the external lights had imploded from the extreme pressures. Skeptics at the time criticized Piccard’s observations, claiming life was impossible at such depths and they were hallucinating.

Due to the cracked window, two men spent just 20 minutes on the trench floor.

Eating chocolate bars for energy, they shivered in the cold.  The bathysphere temperature was only 45 F (7 Celsius). They finally managed to speak with their mother ship using a sonar-hydrophone.  Travelling at a speed of nearly a mile per second, it still took 14 seconds for a message to travel from the Trieste to the surface and back.

Piccard slowly unloaded the iron pellet ballast and the Trieste began to float back to the surface. The ascent was much quicker than the dive, taking only three hours and fifteen minutes.  If you consider that faster, when you are freezing inside a cracked, cramped, and cold dark sphere.

At the surface came cheers and champagne.  Both men were celebrated as two of the world’s great explorers. For a time, the Piccard family, father and son, held the record for both the highest altitude balloon and the deepest ocean dive.  The historic dive ushered in a golden age of underwater exploration. Men like Jacques Cousteau lead the way, in which submersibles would make amazing discoveries in oceanography and marine biology.

The Trieste was retired by the Navy in 1963. You can view the original today on exhibit at the U.S. Navy Museum in Washington DC.  So costly and risky was the descent into the Mariana Trench it was not attempted it again for another 52 years. It’s been repeated only once, in 2012. This time solo done by Canadian explorer and filmmaker James Cameron (of Titanic and Avatar movie fame) in the torpedo-shaped, DeepSea Challenger.  And this time, Cameron was sure to take copious videos, enough for an award winning documentary of the same name.

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The Armenian Genocide – the Tragic, Forgotten Holocaust

Armenian Genocide: children on a Death March into the Syrian Desert, 1915
Armenian Genocide: children on a Death March into the Syrian Desert, 1915

Most know of the Jewish Holocaust, committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. But many are oblivious to Armenian Genocide, the 1st modern atrocity of the 20th century. It occurred 30 years earlier during World War I. In 1915, leaders of the Ottoman Empire began the systemic expulsion and extermination of Armenian Christians living in what is today eastern Turkey. Somewhere near 2 million Armenians (10% of the Empire) were forcibly deported from their homeland, resulting in 1.5 MILLION Deaths.

Call it a holocaust, genocide or ethnic cleansing – it was an attempt to exterminate an entire people.

Armenians have been in the Caucasus mountains of the northern Middle East for millennia. Armenia was an independent kingdom in the 4th century and became the first nation to make Christianity its national religion. Ruled at various times by Persians, Romans, Arabs and Mongols, it was eventually absorbed into the mammoth Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. At its peak, the vast Ottoman Empire included much of southeastern Europe, ALL of the Middle East, and North Africa.

While the Sultans permitted Armenian Christians to maintain autonomy, they also treated them as infidels, with few rights. In spite of this, Armenians tended to be wealthier & better educated than Turks: businessmen, lawyers, and doctors, educated in Europe. The Ottoman Sultans, however, resented their success.

By contrast, the majority of Muslim Turks were poor and illiterate. The Sultans had placed little worth on education, valuing blind obedience instead. Layered on this were long held suspicions that Armenians were more loyal to Christian nations, like their nearby enemy Russia. They shared a disputed border with the Russian Empire, including Crimea on the Black Sea.

By the beginning of the 20th century, nationalist reformers called “Young Turks” overthrew Sultan Hamid and established a modern constitutional government. Unfortunately, 3 Pashas within the Young Turks soon assumed dictatorial control, just like the Sultans had.  They promised a pure Muslim state, and again viewed Armenian Christians as a threat. Anti-Armenian demonstrations were staged in Istanbul, often leading to violence.

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered WWI on the side of Germany and Austro-Hungary.

The Eastern Front eventually included the disputed border with Russia. Since Christian Russia was now the enemy, the 3 Pashas argued that Armenians were traitors who could not to be trusted and would if fact fight for the Allies. This led the dictators to push for the complete removal of Armenians from the Empire.  About 40,000 Armenian men were serving in the Ottoman Army in the war. However they were quickly disarmed and switched to labor battalions, building roads or carrying supplies.

In April 1915, the government executed 300 Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul. Next came mass arrests of Armenian men for treason throughout the country. The 3 Pashas created a ‘Special Organization’ which organized ‘Killing Squads’ to deal with deported Armenians. Men were taken to the outskirts of their towns and shot. Armenian women, children, and the elderly were ordered to leave their homes and villages for ‘relocation’ to non-military zones for their own safety. Ottoman families quickly moved into the homes of deported Armenians and seized their property.

The Armenians were actually being taken on what became Death Marches, walking hundreds of miles into the scorching Syrian desert. When food or water ran out, they were given nothing more by their guards. Some were stripped naked and forced to walk under the desert sun until they dropped from dehydration. Any who stumbled from exhaustion were beaten or shot. Gendarmes pushed them off cliffs, or burned them alive. Soon, the Empire’s roadsides to the south were littered with unburied corpses, shocking foreign diplomats at the time. Young girls were raped, killed or forced to become sex slaves in harems. Children were made to denounce Christianity and forcibly converted to Islam.

Armenians being marched to execution at Turkish gunpoint in Kharput
Armenians being marched to execution at Turkish gunpoint in Kharput

By the end of WWI, there were only 390,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire, 75% of them had been killed. Newspapers like the New York Times published reports with shocking headlines like: “Armenians Are Sent to Perish in the Desert – Turks Accused of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population” (18 August 1915). The Ottoman government in Istanbul denied there was an Armenian Genocide, but rather the killing of an enemy force within their borders during wartime.

World War I ended in 1918 with the defeat of Germany and the Ottoman Empire.

The 3 Pashas fled to Germany where they were offered asylum. Turkey’s new, post-war government asked Berlin to extradite the Pashas. But all requests were turned down. A separate Armenian nation was briefly created after the war. Then Turkey’s new nationalist leader refused to accept the post WWI treaty. He instead re-occupied Armenian lands in 1920.  Sadly, no Allied powers came to aid the fledgling republic.

Two years later, Armenia was absorbed into the Soviet Union. Armenian activists took matters into their own hands, located 2 of the Pashas responsible for the Armenian genocide living lavishly in Germany and assassinated them both with a bullet to the head. The third was killed by the Russian military in 1922.

The half-hearted reaction of the world’s major powers, including Britain and the U.S., to the Armenian Genocide was duly noted by none other than a young Adolf Hitler as he dreamt up the Jewish Holocaust. After becoming Germany’s Fuhrer in 1934, Hitler told his Nazi generals:

“I have sent to the East my Death’s Head Units with the orders to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Jewish blood. Only in such a way will we win what we need.
After all, who still talks of the Armenians?” – Adolf Hitler
For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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