San Diego – Walter M. “Wally” Schirra Jr., who as one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts combined the right stuff – textbook-perfect flying ability and steely nerves – with a pronounced rebellious streak, died Thursday at 84.
He was the only astronaut to fly in all three of NASA’s original manned spaceflight programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Although he never walked on the moon, Schirra laid some of the groundwork that made the lunar landings possible and won the space race for the United States.
Schirra died of a heart attack at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, said Ruth Chandler Varonfakis, a family friend and spokeswoman for the San Diego Aerospace Museum.
In 1962, the former Navy test pilot became the fifth American in space – behind Alan Shepard, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter – and the third American to orbit Earth, circling the globe six times in a flight that lasted more than nine hours.
Schirra returned to space in 1965 as commander of Gemini 6. About 185 miles above Earth, he guided his two-man capsule to within a few feet of Gemini 7 in the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit.
On his third and final flight, aboard Apollo 7 in 1968, he helped set the stage for the landing of men on the moon during the summer of 1969.
First corned beef in space
Schirra was named one of the Mercury Seven in 1959. Of them, only Glenn and Carpenter are still alive.
Supremely confident, Schirra sailed through rigorous astronaut training with what one reporter called “the ease of preparing for a family picnic.”
“He was a practical joker, but he was a fine fellow and a fine aviator,” Carpenter recalled Thursday. “He will be sorely missed in our group.”
Roger Launius, a space historian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said Schirra “had a personality that was fun and effervescent. He had the gift of gab. He was able to take complex engineering and scientific ideas and translate that to something that was understandable.”
Launius recalled that Schirra smuggled a corned beef sandwich onto his Gemini flight.
During the mid-December 1965 flight, he and his Gemini crewmate, Thomas Stafford, unnerved Mission Control when they reported, slowly and in deadpan fashion, seeing some kind of UFO consisting of “a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit” – Santa Claus.
Schirra left NASA in 1969 and retired from the Navy with the rank of captain, having logged more than 295 hours in space. He became a commentator with CBS.
Dad was a barnstormer
“Mostly it’s lousy out there,” Schirra said in 1981 on the occasion of the first space shuttle flight. “It’s a hostile environment, and it’s trying to kill you. The outside temperature goes from a minus 450 degrees to a plus 300 degrees. You sit in a flying Thermos bottle.”
Born in Hackensack, N.J., Schirra was practically born to fly. His father was a fighter pilot during World War I and later barnstormed at county fairs with Schirra’s mother.
Schirra took his first flight with his father at age 13 and already knew how to fly when he left home for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Schirra flew 90 combat missions during the Korean War. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air Medals.
Carpenter’s daughter, Kris Stoever of Denver, co-authored with her father a book about the early astronauts, “For Spacious Skies.”
In the book, Rene Carpenter said Schirra, who lived in Denver for a few years in the 1980s, was “perceptive, opinionated and a great storyteller.”
“Wally was a very funny man,” said Stoever. “But he was dead serious inside and physically fearless.”
On his Web page is a quote from Schirra: “I have yet to figure out why my life story needs to be on the Web.”
Schirra is survived by his wife, Josephine, of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.; his daughter, Suzanne Schirra, an artist in Vail; and his son, Wally Schirra III.
Staff writer Virginia Culver contributed to this report.
