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Not So Sure. The TV and radio audiences were told by Lieut. Colonel John ("Shorty") Powers, press chief of Project Mercury (see PRESS) that there had been "an indication of a problem with the heat shield deployment switch. The signal apparently was erroneous." But at the time, neither the men on the ground nor the astronaut in the sky were so sure that the signal was wrong.
Glenn took the news of the deadly threat with characteristic calmness. He made the adjustments necessary to keep the retrorocket packet in place, hand-flew his capsule into proper attitude for descent—and braced himself. Timed by a preset mechanism in the capsule, the braking rockets fired in sequence. Friendship 7 shuddered. "It feels like I'm going clear back to Hawaii," Glenn radioed. He could feel his body beginning to be squeezed by the buildup of G forces. Outside the window, he could see a fiery glow. It grew brighter and brighter. "It became apparent that something was tearing up the heat shield end of the capsule." Glenn said later. "There were large pieces anywhere from as big as the end of your finger to seven or eight inches in diameter that were coming past the window. You could see the fire and the glow from them —big flaming chunks."
On the ground. Astronaut Alan Shepard, the capsule communicator at Cape Canaveral, lost radio contact with Glenn. At the same time, other instruments tracking the capsule stopped registering. The blackout was predictable, caused by ionization from the heat of reentry. It lasted for seven minutes and 15 seconds. Then came John Glenn's exultant voice. "Boy!" he cried. "That was a real fireball!"
Glenn had made it. As it later turned out, Glenn's heat shield had been in place all along; a monitor in the capsule had been flashing a misleading signal to the ground. But John Glenn could not be certain that he was safe until he saw that the parachute which would lower his capsule gently into the Atlantic had opened. Said he the next day: "That's probably the prettiest of sight you ever saw in your life."
At 2:43 p.m., Friendship 7 splashed into the Atlantic with a sizzle as the red-hot shield turned the sea water to steam. Surging ahead at flank speed, the destroyer Noa* began to race helicopters from the carrier Randolph to the scene. The Noa won, plucked the capsule out of the ocean at 3:01. Across the U.S., the TV audience sagged weakly with relief.
Still trying to follow the flight plan, Glenn struggled for a moment to get out from the narrow upper exit of the capsule. But the capsule was stifling from the heat of reentry. "I'd been sweating for a long period of time," Glenn recalled, "and it seemed like the thing to do was to get on out of there at that time." He blew the side hatch, stepped out onto the deck of the Noa into the afternoon sun and was given a glass of iced tea. "It was hot in there," said John Glenn. His historic flight was over.