Late on the morning of January 27, 1967...

Crew of Apollo 1 (left to right)
Ed White II, Command Module Pilot
Gus Grissom, Commander
Roger Chaffee, Lunar Module Pilot

were sealed into Spacecraft 012 at Kennedy Space center, Florida USA for a "full dress rehearsal" with 100 per cent oxygen.

Under intense political pressure, a decision had been made to skip the unmanned test. The planned program was to include every step except fueling and launch. The test was plagued with technical difficulties from a spacecraft that had a history of problems, repairs and more repairs.

Five hours into the frustrating process, the countdown was placed on hold at T-minus 10 minutes and scheduled to resume at 6:31 P.M. Unknown to astronauts and ground controllers, the insulation had worn from a wire underneath the seat of the spacecraft commander. The wire sparked and caused the oxygen soaked materials inside the spacecraft to explode in a wall of flame.

Hampered by a hatch that required ninety seconds to open, the crew was unable to escape the fire and died.

Also called AS204 (Apollo Spacecraft) it was one of the test vehicles in the Apollo moon program.These men could have been the first to walk on the moon, I feel intense admiration for their bravery and feel sorry for their premature deaths.