posted 07-21-2021 05:05 PM               

Today's panel display presentation below depicts a limited selection or assortment of autographed postal covers for now. There are less than a dozen different signed Mercury Redstone-4 (MR-4) flight postal covers along with some photos signed by the veteran Mercury pilot and first Gemini and Apollo crew commander.

The NASA black and white glossy photo at bottom right is perhaps my all-time favorite vintage-era Grissom-autographed picture of his MR-4 launch. I just love his bold full signature in clear ballpoint ink that had been penned by Liberty Bell 7's pilot that same month right after his suborbital space feat. The same could also be said for the signed Mercury Swanson/SCC flight cover; it has an excellent ballpoint pen signature beneath the cachet at bottom left that had been applied in the same year when MR-4 flew.

Grissom's rocket ride made him the first American to directly view the Earth from space. A new first-time trapezoid-shaped spacecraft "pilot's" window had been installed over the pilot's head for MR-4. Liberty Bell 7 was also the first Mercury capsule to have explosive hatch bolts installed for an emergency escape if necessary, and they were mysteriously activated on this mission (keep reading below)!

He admitted to being a "bit scared" at liftoff, as reported by aerospace author Dick Lattimer, but to the American people, he made them feel that hotshot fearless pilot-astronauts had emotions as most of us do. Gus had won their hearts! He also lost a bet during his first space trip. The Mercury astronaut had wagered a bet with two fellow astronaut buddies that he would not see a star on his short daytime flight. As soon as he looked out his capsule window, Grissom said, "Right there in the middle was a single star and I knew right then I had lost two steak dinners."

As most of us know here on cS, the rest of the 16-minute suborbital flight went well, until he almost lost his life at sea when Liberty Bell 7 was back from space on the ocean surface. As Lattimer reports, "He nearly drowned when the capsule hatch suddenly blew off after splashdown and sea water begin to pour into the spacecraft. Grissom barely managed to escape, but Liberty Bell 7 sank in 16,800 feet of ocean water. He then began to worry about sharks, but was finally rescued."

His space helmet floated out of his sinking capsule and it was found by the Navy recovery team next to a 15-foot shark. It would appear that his fears had been well-founded. Some 38 years later, in July 1999, the sunken Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft was located, recovered, and retrieved back to Port Canaveral.

One of the original first seven astronauts chosen by NASA in 1959, Air Force Captain Grissom (later advanced to rank of Lt. Colonel) had been named "an astronaut's astronaut" by many within the space agency during his nearly 8 year astronaut career that sadly ended on Jan. 27, 1967, by the Apollo 1 (AS-204) tragedy.