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The other helicopter was still struggling with the Liberty Bell 7. It finally got a cable attached, but found the waterlogged capsule too heavy to lift out of the water. When Pilot Lewis tried to tow the sluggish load toward the Randolph he got only a little way before his engine heated up from the strain. He had to release the capsule for fear of losing his helicopter. Moaned a crewman: "Oh, my God we lost it!" The swamped Liberty Bell 7 sank forever in water more than three miles deep, leaving behind for recovery only the parachute and a small section of the capsule's top.
Next day, at a press conference at Cape Canaveral, a matter-of-fact Gus Grissom said he had pulled the safety pins as a preliminary to blowing the hatch, and then: "I was lying there minding my own business when—pow! I saw blue sky. The biggest shock of the whole day was seeing that door blow off." Once in the ocean, he said, he found that he had neglected to close a port in his suit, and water was seeping in "and I was getting lower and lower." How did he feel then? Said the frank astronaut: "I was scared."
A solemn inquiry will no doubt solve the mystery of Grissom's unexpected exit, the in-flight difficulties of the capsule, and its poor resistance to the sea, which cost Project Mercury the prestige of making a second unmarred suborbital flight. But the capsule did not take too much of technical value to the bottom of the sea. Most of its performance in space was followed on the ground by excellent telemetering. The biggest loss was probably the camera films that recorded directly the readings of the instruments and the expression on Grissom's face. As anyone could see, that expression at flight's end was one of relief at a narrow escape.