Although this photo was taken as a lighthearted gag, the image of the Apollo 1 crew jokingly praying over a miniature of their command module turned deadly serious in retrospect. The three men — Roger Chaffee, Virgil Grissom, and Ed White — would burn to death during a test launch on January 27, 1967.
Tragically, the three men had even voiced concerns about the craft’s amount of flammable materials to Joseph Shea, manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. They then took this portrait and presented it to Shea shortly before the fatal accident with a caption that read: “It isn’t that we don’t trust you, Joe, but this time we’ve decided to go over your head.”
