supervisor -- to the tech supervisor, i says, jim, can you do that in two hours? he said, man, give me 2 1/2. i said, okay. 2 1/2 you make it. he said i make it. he got it. in 2 1/2 hours. he may have killed himself, you know, but it was there. and see, this was where you base your confidence on. in other words, like when i talk to the test conductor, he isn't there. he doesn't see what goes on. i am his eyes. and if i give him a phony story, the system won't work. so in other words, he has to rely on it that whatever it is is true. in other words, before a test, hours before that i will go up, i would look through all the books and so on, did we all complete this. if a guy says, oh, that is done, i said if it is done, why do i not see a stamp there? because in other words, you know, you can't go half-way.

it either is or is not. and sometimes it gets into hurt some people. one time also on mercury, we had a problem and we were very short on time and the electrical engineering manager, bruce, he was going to go ahead and take two vials and test into a plug. i wouldn't let him do that. because the same plug, about the 54-connecter plug, had tbeen stripped. i told him the only way i let you do that is by making me a companion plug. we check it out. he said that takes four hours. i said, the longer you talk, the longer it takes. so he went to john yardly and yardly called me and he says, what's the story on that? i said, john, over my dead body.

he says, i wouldn't let him do it. john calls back, he said who in the hell works for whom? i said, john, you know who works for whom. the longer you talk -- then he says, okay, we'll make a pig tail. later on john came up, he says, i could have saved me a lot of time, i shouldn't have even called you, i knew what the outcome was going to be. but see, there are certain things you let happen and certain things can you not let happen. you have to have a line where you say, okay, that's it. that was -- after the gemini program, most of the astronauts said, okay, we would like to you come over to apollo. i talked to the managers at north american, i said now i need to understand i have complete control over the people that work for me, i have the hiring and firing authority, and

i report to the base manager. no, you can't do that. that's a new hire. i said, okay, since that's the only way i knew how to do my job and it worked well for two programs,ky not see making any change so i said you don't need me. so then i stayed with mcdonnell and came to titusville. actually, i opened a gun range for testing antitank missiles here in titusville. that was until after the fire. now the fire took me very hard. because when you know the individuals, you know you have times with them and they're your friends. couple days later i got a call, hey, we really need some help so come on over and worth with north american. said, i can't do my job the way i'm used to. he said, oh, i got something that says you can.

let's just put him on. the guy got on the phone, he says i'm mr. bergen and i can assure you can help whatever you need. i didn't know who the heck bergen was. i talked then to pierce and moore and we agreed, yeah, i need to revamp the system there. because -- okay, let's not go into detail why it went wrong. i said, by the way, who the heck is bergen? the guy i talked to a couple nights ago. they had one of those picture organizational charts. there on the top it says bergen, president of north american. then i knew why i could get now what i needed. then i started on the apollo program. and i made some changes, because when you have something that works well for you, why would you want to change it? >> you said the fire upset you. did you have that sense that you wish you'd gone, that you wish you'd already been there? or do you think you could have

even made any difference? >> you know, that's a question that i was rather frequently asked, you know, would you have prevented it. i always refuse to answer that question because i would be strictly conjecture. okay? so later on i thought in a way it was unique. somebody's looking out for me, because if i had been there and it happened to me, it would have been very, very devastating. okay? so i was spared that having been in charge of it. see, that later on happened again with the "challenger." i was not involved directly, even though i was on the safety board at that time and i was primarily responsible for flight krewe safety. there was nothing wrong with the orbiter. see? though that was again, it did not fall in my area of responsibility, because that's when it really gets to you. if you have no control over it,

there's not much you can do and it is a little easier to take. let's put it that way. so somebody was looking out for me. >> let's go back to mercury for a minute. give me a sense of what your crew's responsibilities were. let's say maybe on launch day. let's take each program that you worked on. what did you all do on launch day and what were your responsibilities? >> mercury wasn't as complicated, so to speak, as later on gemini and apollo. first thing before you launch it, first you go through the steps a little bit -- you put your spacecraft on top of the rocket. okay? now we have to hook up all the connectors that interface with the rocket itself. then you have to prove that all the wiring and all the circuits in there work. then each system engineer wants to make sure his system is still

working, be it communication system, oxygen system, environmental control system. the guidance system is on but each one needs to test it. now the problem is each one wants to do it at the same time. it doesn't work. you now have to go ahead and play traffic cop and say, okay, can you do your job in the time slot after we have powered up and you can do yours at this time. however, i need these people to monitor this. see, that's where you need to prepare everything. then before launch you get -- mercury wasn't that critical because they didn't have much in the way of food provisioning or things like that but you had to load the oxygen on-board, you had to load the hydrogen peroxide, which by the way, was a big problem on john glenn's flight because we had to scrap a couple of times. and then you have to see that all the pressure systems work

correctly. and that you can integrate it with the other activities that the launch crew has to do. for instance, do you have to check the command of the structure. you have simulators in it. then after that you have to hook the connectors up. now we have to verify that the connectors are hook up correctly. so there are lots and lots of things that you have to do in order to verify that everything works correctly. so that was what we had to do. sometimes it takes hours and hours on end to do that. as a matter of fact, we always had a little joke. laying on your back for hours on end is not the most comfortable thing so one time during mercury the doctors in the -- the facilities they are always our

enemies because they always came up wanting to poke the astronaut one more time, need some more blood, need some more urine and bring back all the samples that you discharge. so all of a sudden they said that john's heart rate and breathing rate had gone up and they didn't have an explanation for that. and john said he was perfectly all right. you see, never did we tell the block house that one of our techs had held the center. >> caller: fold of "playboy" magazine in front of the pare scopare periscope. >> i wouldn't think john glenn would react to that. >> no. but it was unusual to see that. the other time, we had a very famous real good restaurant in cocoa beach that served real good german food. one day we were testing the spacecraft and scott carpenter was in.

you need to understand the old suit system. to begin with all the suits were set up to fly in space at 5 psi absolute pressure. so you had a sir clafting system in the suit where the air would recirculate, go through, take the carbon monoxide out and so on. here was carter with several hours in it. all after sudden you hear. oops, something is wrong. minute later you go like, oh. and by that time i could see the doctor climbing up on their chairs. scott, what is wrong? one more time and they became unglued and wanted to stop the count. they said, scott, tell us what is wrong. he said, okay, if you really want to know. he said that's the last time i go to that german restaurant. and not have sauerkraut and

beer. i leave it to your imagination what happened in his suit. everything would come back to him, whatever was in the suit. >> what fun. >> we had some lighter moments. >> you talked about all the things that you did to get ready for close-out. one of the things was getting the astronaut in the mercury capsule and knowing that you're the last person maybe that they're going to see. tell me about that process and when you would leave the pad, how long were they out there by themself? >> okay. now essentially what happens is before the restaurant gets in, have you the suit technician go in and arrange all the cables, the scraps, the restraint systems, the hoses, so that nothing gets damaged, especially in mercury when the astronaut gets in. because it was a pretty tight fit. we always used to show and say we got the astronaut with a shoe horn and get him out with a can opener because it was very, very

tight places. once we had everything arranged and the astronaut would get in, i asked test conductor, are you ready? he give us a go that everything was -- in other words, he knew of nothing wrong with the booster, nothing wrong with the other people, nothing wrong with the range, nothing wrong with the ground support equipment. he would give us a go-for insertion. then we put the astronaut and the suit tech would hook up all the hoses and restraint systems and so on. so then the next thing is you do a com check, see if the communications work. the environmental people looked at the floow, air flow is corret and so on. if anything is great, nothing has changed, no big problem, then i ask permission to go ahead and close the hatch. once i get a go to close the hatch, i normally would lean in and say, now you need to understand communication are limited because he has a bill

helmet on. i would normally go in and say are you happy with everything? give me the thumbs up or he would say yes, he is okay. if he said he is okay, one look around and we remove anything like safety pins later on in gemini and so on. everything looks good. then i would tell the techs, okay, put the hatch on. then we put the hatch on. next thing we need to do is run a cabin pressure check, leak check. if that turns out all right, then we are now ready to go. and about -- normally about an hour before lift-off we would clear out the -- we would leave. those of us in the structure would go back. last range support functions were performed, then we had lift-off. >> where would you watch the launch from? >> we would go to a very forward position that we called the road block where the crew, i had always an emergency crew that in case we need to go in a hurry,

we would stay there right at the road block. i also had my electrical technicians, mechanical technicians and the system guys where at the last minute we had them there at the road block because everybody else would be cleared. we would be watching it from the road block. >> right there. now, during that time you've talked about how were you a stickler for doing things right. but let's face it, the rules were very different. i mine i've heard stories, you just walk through clouds of toxic fume. >> sure. >> give me a sense of how different it was when compared to today you can't move without these regulations being followed and the safety -- give me a sense of that and your feelings about the changes. >> you got to understand, there were lots of things we did not know. you know? in other words, the flow system, for instance, on the redstone rocket was you feed it until it run out from the overflow on a

pipe which was just dumping it right on the pan. later on we learned that oxygen and tar don't work together too well. you know? but we still did it that way but except we put the tar and put silicon. so you learned a great deal. we say anybody on the pad, don't smoke for the next four hours because the oxygen sat rates your clothes. and polyester clothes goes up in flames. so you learn as you went along. and a lot of safety precautions that you took, like for instance when we learn that in huntsville, a very, very nice orderly technician had gotten some of the scripts -- the scripts are initiators that electronically initiate the

pyrotechnic charge. had he some of the scripts in his hand and he saw a big power cable laying on ground there which looked pretty messy. so he coiled it up nicely. when he had it up nicely, scripts in his hand went off. why? because he had created an electromagnetic coil and it blew up. so now we found out that you could blow up scripts rather easily with electromagnetic actions. >> what happened to his hand? >> it wasn't burned. just slightly burned. but now we learned that you have to have what we called 1m no-fire scripts. okay, you change the scripts. and see, as you go along, you learn a great deal about it. and it's an evolving process. >> what do you think about how strict things are now? >> now actually, things were

stricter a little bit in the beginning. you need to understand the air force was very strict with their rules and regulations. some them on the air force side were ridiculous. again, you know how that goes sometimes. later on when we learned a thing, we made our own rules and especially with -- there used to be the famous red clouds. we didn't think it was that bad, it gave you a sour taste on your tongue and so on, but frequently on the gemini pad we were enclosed in a big old red cloud. it wasn't that bad until we found out if you parked a car close by or if the security came up and they walked through the cloud, all their badges turn black and the bumpers turn black on the cars. so we found that might not be too good to breathe that stuff. but we had to learn all these

things. as a matter of fact, when you talk about some -- when we used the peroxide system, you always could tell the people that worked on the peroxide systems because they always had white hair, even being 20 years old, because hydrogen peroxide does something like that. when i mention peroxide, for instance, when we scrubbed one of john's launches, it was other interesting, we had loaded the peroxide system and the fellow on the ground support crew says, yeah, i got the whole weight of the peroxide system in the spacecraft. but the guy that controlled the gauges in the spacecraft says i don't see anything in my spacecraft. you didn't pump it up. the guy says, yeah, but i mean it has gone up there. where is it? we had a horrible thought. it hadn't gone in the spacecraft. had it gone between the spacecraft and the heat shield

and it was sloshing around in there. there was a leak. now peroxide, 92% peroxide is looking for hydrocarbon to go in what they call instant combustion. so now what do we do? okay. you sit there, you think. now if you shake it well, it blows up. so we cleared all the pad first. and then what we decided is i got the engineer who knew the belly band and so on. long story short, what we had to do is to take that spacecraft off the atlas rocket, very carefully lift it over the side, get the fire department arranged around the pad. i said now when we come down, five feet above the ground, we had the strength, we will drop the heat shield -- you know, they had a heat shield that would drop four feet and you spray water like hell to dilute it. but we didn't know what would happen so we very carefully got

it over on the side and dropped it down and then we pulled the cord and nothing happened. but see, these are the things you learn. as a matter of fact, before we launched him on the redstone pad we had two-inch lift-off and it set back down. you know that famous thing. then the parachute came out and all this jazz hatched. though then we were at the road block at that time and i got a call says, okay, we like to have -- oh, first thing was the doctor was going to go ahead and have pad safety shoot holes in the rocket because the rockets wouldn't vent. in other words, the big pressure, the oxygen vent was closed and he was going to shoot holes in it. now yardly objected to it because he says i got a good spacecraft here. if you blow it up i use a good spacecraft. so then what do we do next? by then they had a fellow by the

name of shockey and he was a mechanic. now he had to go into the tail end of the red stone rocket sitting there pressurized, hook up a quarter-inch line and then open the hand valve just so that it would open but not too much because it would trigger the release up there. and then run like hell back to the block house and just before you made it, it relieved the pressure. big shot of oxygen, gas came out. now we had the thing, at least we had it depressurized. but now we found out that in the spacecraft itself there was what we call an 05g switch. that is a switch that when it detected the earth's atmosphere at a certain pressure, it would fire the retro rockets. now the retro rockets were sitting right above the alcohol tank on the redstone. now we couldn't have that happen

though. in other words, don't hit the spacecraft with anything. we had volunteers who would go out, open the umbilical which had closed and put four jumper cables in. except to open the umbilical you had to drill out some rivets to do that. long story short, the spacecraft manager, bob graham, the tech supervisor is jimmy jones, and myself, we were on tier to go up there. what's interesting by that time pad safety had come and put all kinds of cameras there. i said now what the hell good do these cameras do? they said, oh, it can't do anything for you but at least we will see what happened when it happened. >> so that was all to save the spacecraft. >> all to save the spacecraft. though we went up there. they had brought the structure back in place.

we went up there and very carefully drilled out the rivets, then very carefully incertified the pins. then when they said, okay, then we still had another problem with some switches that we had to open the hatch and it was funny, all the screws were matched to a particular hole. and i will never forget the fael low that used to match these was very particular about it where they would go. he had a cardboard box where he stuck all the screws. we took the screws out and pitched them in the corner. i said, oh, that guy is going to kill us when he find out what we did to his crews. we opened the hatch and now we were safe. this is how we used to do things. >> that's amazing. >> you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of people and events that helped document the american story. all weekend every weekend on c-span3.

louisiana governor bobby jindal is scheduled to release his proposal for a budget $900 million in the red. in shreveport now, mostly cloudy and 37 degrees at the airport. 38 in medvin. >> next weekend book tv and american history tv explore the history and literary culture of shreveport, louisiana. saturday starting at noon eastern on book tv on c-span 2, author gary joiner on the union army's failure, the red river campaign of 1864 and then a look at over the 200,000 books housed at the lsu shreveport archives. then a walking tour of shreveport and bosier city. on c-span3 sunday at 5:00 p.m. eastern, from barksdale, air

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good afternoon. i'm director the national archives experience and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the william g. mcxwchlt gowan theat. the congressional medal of honor, a bleak december in 1861. more than 12,000 men had already died in a conflict more bloody than most had imagined possible. with no end in sight. it is in this context that lincoln signs the navy bill authorizing recognition for gallantry in action that becomes the medal of honor. documents attesting to the heroism of civil war soldiers and an actual medal of honor, a medal never delivered because

its recipient died in andersonville prison camp are now on display in the rotunda gallery on exhibit level. i encourage you to visit the exhibit at the end of this program. today's panel reminds us that the sacrifice of those bitter years were, unfortunately, not unique in our history. every generation has required us to have individuals willing to sacrifice for the good of the nation. we are honored to have members of our current generation of living heroes among us today. before we start the program, i just want to tell you about a few of the other upcoming events at the national archives. several of our daytime events this january touch on the civil war and its aftermath. next wednesday at noon in the jefferson room, adam goodhart recounts the start of the conflict talking about his book "1861 -- a civil war awakening."

on friday, the 20th, sidney nathan's noon time program is a story of mary walker, a fugitive slave who spent nearly two decades trying to free and reunite her family. 3 of the 11 programs in genealogy workshops we have ahead of us in january. please sign up on the table just outside theater doors to receive a calendar and keep up with our activity, both day and night. before today's panel begins, we have special film presentation to set the stage. the prelim medal of honor portraits of valor beyond the call of duty is actually taken from a film that's included with

this beautiful book that's available for signing at the end of the program. so i invite you to listen in to the film and i'll be back to introduce our moderator in just a minute. thank you. >> many americans do not know what this medal represents. i hope one of these days they will learn. >> it is hard for me to convey how important freedom is and i didn't appreciate it and i don't think that anyone can until they've lost it. it doesn't happen automatically. it's got to be reearned by every generation or at least every other generation. if you let it slip very long,