SCHIRRA, Walter Marty, Jr. ("Wally")

(b. 12 March 1923 in Hackensack, New Jersey), U.S. Navy fighter pilot and test pilot who became one of the first seven U.S. astronauts and was the only astronaut to fly in all of America's first three spaceflight programs—Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

Schirra was born to an engineer and stunt pilot, Walter Marty Schirra, Sr., and a stuntwoman, Florence (Leach) Schirra. His father had been a U.S. Army pilot during World War I. After the war Schirra, Sr., and his wife traveled the United States performing stunts at fairs, with Florence often walking on a wing while her husband put the plane through its paces.

Schirra loved working with his hands, building model airplanes and even a kayak. His father taught him to fly, and Schirra was flying solo by age sixteen. He graduated from Dwight W. Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1940 and entered the Newark College of Engineering (later the New Jersey Institute of Technology) to study aeronautical engineering. In 1942 he entered the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, enlisting in an accelerated three-year matriculation program. He graduated with a B.S. in 1945, but World War II ended before he saw action.

On 23 February 1946 Schirra married Josephine Cook Fraser, the stepdaughter of Admiral James L. Holloway; the couple had two children. Schirra attended pilot's school in Pensacola, Florida, and in 1948 he became a navy pilot. He served with Fighter Squadron Seventy-one for three years, and then in 1951 was temporarily assigned to the U.S. Air Force 154th Fighter Bomber Squadron in Korea, where he flew ninety bombing and close-ground support missions. Schirra spent the years from 1952 to 1954 at the China Lake Naval Ordnance Training Station in California, where he was a test pilot. In 1954 he became a flight instructor for the F7U-3 Cutlass and the FJ-3 Fury. Then in 1956 he served on the aircraft carrier Lexington as the operations officer. By 1959 he was a test pilot at a base in Patuxent River, Maryland.

Lieutenant Commander Schirra applied to be one of the first U.S. astronauts. After much testing, on 9 April 1959 he was named as one of the Mercury Seven. A relaxed, friendly prankster who took his duties seriously, Schirra made it seem as though he were breezing through the intense astronaut training. He established himself as an expert on life-support systems for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, most notably helping to develop and test space suits.

The fifth manned Mercury mission was assigned to Schirra. There were problems with Sigma 7's launch rockets and a fuel valve that delayed the launch from 28 September to 3 October 1962, when the craft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. To determine whether long space-flights in the Mercury capsule were possible, he tested maneuvering the craft manually, even turning off all of the controls and letting it drift for three hours, twenty-six minutes. About three-fourths of the craft's fuel was still unspent when it splashed down near Midway Island, making that part of the mission successful. However, Schirra's space suit had overheated during the flight and thus required design changes. He remained inside the capsule while it was fished out of the water, becoming the first astronaut not to leave his craft prior to recovery. Schirra was hailed for his accomplishments on Sigma 7 and visited with President John F. Kennedy.

With his successful maneuvering and fuel management on his Mercury flight, Schirra was assigned to one of the space program's most perilous missions. He and Thomas Stafford, one of the second group of astronauts, or New Nine selected in September 1962, were to test the feasibility of docking spacecraft together in space. The navy promoted Schirra to captain in 1965, a year in which the members of the troubled Gemini 6 mission faced their worst problem: an explosion, before it reached orbit, of the unmanned rocket with which Schirra's craft was supposed to dock. Therefore, about an hour before launch on 25 October 1965, the Gemini 6 mission was halted. The event underscored the dangers of Schirra and Stafford's mission.

The mission was changed to be a rendezvous between Gemini 7 and Gemini 6. Part of the Gemini 7 mission was to test the effects of long spaceflights on astronauts, and it had already been in orbit for eleven days before Gemini 6 was finally launched on 15 December 1965. Six hours into their flight, Schirra and Stafford maneuvered their craft within six feet of Gemini 7 and kept it there, proving that spacecraft could be controlled well enough to dock with each other.

The Apollo Moon mission program also was fraught with problems, with astronauts unhappy with poor systems designs and a badly designed hatch to the main capsule. On 27 January 1967 three astronauts were killed when the interior of Apollo 1 caught fire during testing. It was not until Apollo 7 was launched on 11 October 1968 that the three-in-one craft was fully tested in outer space. Schirra commanded that mission, sharing the spacecraft with Donn Eisele (who piloted the command module) and Walter Cunningham (who piloted the lunar module). Schirra and his crew performed a wide variety of maneuvers and tests of the ship's engines to ascertain the craft's ability to function in the complex rendezvous and docking that would be required in an actual flight to the Moon. This flight was the first to have a full-time, fully functioning television camera to reveal the astronauts' activities.

After this successful flight, Schirra retired from both the space program and the navy in 1969. He moved to Colorado and served as a business executive and board member for a series of industrial companies in the 1970s and 1980s. He also provided television commentary for several space missions.

Shirra earned many honors during his years of military service, including three Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Air Medals, both the navy's and NASA's Distinguished Service Award, and an Exceptional Service Medal. In 1987 he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. Schirra was one of the best-liked U.S. astronauts, with his quick wit and affable demeanor defusing tension in many difficult situations. His work in the 1960s on life-support systems helped to make the Apollo Moon missions more comfortable by eliminating unnecessary noises, making temperature controls easier to use, and making space suits not only safe but also flexible. His testing of ways to conserve fuel was essential to the eventual success of the Moon missions.

Schirra with Richard N. Billings, Schirra's Space (1988; rev. ed., 1995), offers the astronaut's own highly opinionated view of the history of America's space programs. Schirra is profiled in M. Scott Carpenter, et al., We Seven, by the Astronauts Themselves (1962). Current Biography Yearbook (1966) provides an adequate account of Schirra's early life. See the NASA website, "Walter M. Schirra," Astronaut Bio, for a brief summary of Schirra's accomplishments. This website also offers access to Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson, Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (1979), which includes an informative account of the Apollo 7 flight.

Kirk H. Beetz