Günter Wendt and ‘Failure of Imagination’
IMAGINATION AND SPACEFLIGHT SAFETY
Günter Wendt offers his best wishes to Astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., command pilot, as he arrives in the white room atop Pad LC 34. — NASA Photo.
As a young man in Germany, Günter Wendt studied mechanical engineering and became a flight engineer aboard Luftwaffe night fighters. He also completed a four-year apprenticeship during the war learning aircraft building. After the Allied victory there was not opportunity for aircraft engineers to be found in postwar Germany so Wendt immigrated to America where his Father lived in St. Louis, Missouri. Because of his background, he had the tentative promise of a job at the McDonnell Aircraft Plant. There was one problem. In 1949 Germany was still technically at war with the United States so he could not be hired immediately. He became a truck mechanic.
Eventually Wendt was hired and when McDonnell built the Mercury Capsules he went to Cape Canaveral to oversee the final assembly and launch. Beginning with Ham the Chimpanzee’s launch, Günter would go on to oversee the launches of human astronauts in the Mercury and Gemini programs. Wendt recalls a time when some congressman showed up before Ham’s launch and insisted on seeing the chimp. Well, Ham had had a rather intense day of testing and was in a foul mood. In spite of being warned that it might not be such a good idea, he went to see the chimp anyway. Ham, who was not impressed, threw chimp droppings at the man, scoring a direct hit on the congressman’s white shirt and tie!
Günter Wendt became good friends with the human astronauts who came to appreciate his no-nonsense approach to pad safety and his sense of humor. He knew the risks involved and sought to minimize them as much as he could. His position, largely self-defined was “Pad Leader.” Though he was a representative of the civilian contractor, he could call off a launch. John Glenn and the astronauts dubbed him“Pad Fuhrer”and someone even presented him with a Col. Klink helmet. Wendt became famous for joking around with the spacemen but he never forgot the serious nature of his position, saying: “Sometimes you have to make a stand, without caring what the consequences are. You have to be living with your own conscience. It does not matter if you lost a lot of money, or got fired. You can't be telling yourself later that you killed somebody because you screwed up. You have to live with your conscience.”
He got to know the astronauts and their families as well. He had these words for John Glenn’s wife before his famous flight in Friendship Seven: “Annie, we cannot guarantee you safe return of John. This would be lying. Nobody can guarantee you this – there is too much machinery involved. The one thing I can guarantee you is that when the spacecraft leaves it is in the best possible condition for a launch. If anything should happen to the spacecraft, I would like to be able to come and tell you about the accident and look you straight in the eye and say, 'We did the best we could.' My conscience then is clear and there is where my guideline is.”
After Gemini, North American Rockwell was building the Apollo capsules and Wendt moved on. After the terrible fire that killed astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra insistedthat Wendt return to his old post for the launch of Apollo 7. North American’s president called him and assured him he would have the same authority he had had before and he remained through the Apollo program. In the movie, Apollo 13, he is briefly saluted by Tom Hanks, playing Jim Lovell, saying:“I vonder were Günter Wendt?”He was truly the last person who interacted with the astronauts before they were launched, closing the hatch before they took off. After the integrity of the capsule was tested and the hatch was sealed, Günter would evacuate the crew of the white room and they would proceed to the pad access roadblock where they could quickly return to the spacecraft should they be needed. Actually the “I vonder were Günter Wendt?”quote comes from Apollo 7 astronaut Don Eislee, but it sums up the respect and friendship all the astronauts felt for him. Wendt retired fromNASA (actually North American) in 1989. He was married to his wife Herma for forty years and she proceeded him in death. Wendt died on May 3, 2010, at his home in Merritt Island, Florida, following congestive heart failure and a stroke. His survivors include his three daughters, Irina Thompson, Norma Wendt, and Sandra Taylor; five grandchildren; a great-grandson; and a great-great-grandson.
A “Failure of Imagination”
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By Keith Bassham
Since viewing the film and reading the transcript, I have learned Borman did not coin that phrase, “a failure of imagination.” It was used at least once in an evangelistic situation. The evening before C. S. Lewis knelt and became, in his words, “the most reluctant convert in all of Christendom,” he had been walking and talking with his friend J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis, though partially persuaded of the truth of Jesus Christ, was still full of objections. At one point Tolkien interjected, “Your inability to understand stems from a failure of imagination on your part!”
My wife and I have been watching space films lately. Not the fantasy, Buck Rogers kind. This is NASA/Discovery Channel stuff — that, and some dramatic series based on the real thing. We just finished the film that portrayed the capsule fire in which the three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, lost their lives February 21, 1967. Putting live men into space and returning them safely is an incredibly complex affair, and with all the moving parts, electronic glitches, mission outlines, and the unforeseen human element, problems will occur. Often they are minute in importance, simple to overcome, and without serious consequences. Others, well, there is always the unexpected.(read more)