Remembering Apollo 1 Options

[dvandorn]

I've been re-reading my copy of Murray & Cox's excellent history of Apollo (entitled, simply enough, "Apollo, The Race to the Moon"), and I just finished the section about The Fire.

I'm a little curious -- we've discussed here, before, about how Jules Bergman felt it necessary to run the audio tape of the final transmissions from Apollo 1 as the crew struggled in vain to get the hatch open. But, as I read the piece again this time, another fragment of memory popped up that I'm pretty sure happened, but that I can hardly believe was allowed.

On level A-8 of the Pad 34 service tower, where the White Room enclosed the spacecraft, there were several TV cameras. One was in the White Room itself. While there was no camera inside the spacecraft, that camera in the White Room was pointed directly at the Apollo hatch, and there are a number of descriptions of the hatch window becoming very bright as the fire swept across the cabin, with some blurry indications of motion as Ed White tried to open it.

I don't really see how it's possible, but I have a very clear memory of seeing a videotape of that camera as the fire flared. I saw it back in 1967, within a week or two of the event. It wasn't until 1981 ior 1982 that Bergman ran the comm tape, but I know with great certainty that I saw the video of the hatch window.

However -- again, I don't understand how it's possible that such a tape could possibly have been available to the TV networks at the time. I don't even see that it's likely that all of the pad cameras were even attached to video recorders (especially since videotape was a relatively new technology in 1967, and you'd need a separate huge recording deck for each camera on the pad).

Does anyone else remember ever seeing these images? If so, can you remember when and where?

Thanks in advance, people...

-the other Doug