TBD-1 BuNo 1515... this will make you cry

[airnutz]

Ahhhh..A&E...

Sorry Digger...close subject to our hearts. But the TBD and SBD are also..
someone will help you this morning.... I'm sure!

[HarvardIV]

Digger:

The Lexington carried both SBDs and TBDs.

[mjanovec]

From every book I've read so far, either written by a fellow astronaut or a NASA controller, Grissom was assumed to have NOT blown the hatch on purpose. As other have noted, the lack of a bruise is the physical evidence of such. But also, one must remember how much more dangerous it was to blown a hatch too early. Grissom had to have known that and knew that if he DID blow the hatch, he had a very real possibility of drowning (which he very nearly did).

I think the movie The Right Stuff did a real dis-service to his memory (and to his family) by painting him the way it did. They turned him into a twitchy screw-up who was prone to panic (exactly the opposite of everything every who's known him has said)...and didn't really give the viewers a chance to draw their own conclusions. It might have made for a better Hollywood movie to have him as a scapegoat, but too many people took those scenes to be factual.

History is already interesting enough...I fail to see why Hollywood must embellish it any further (i.e. Pearl Harbor).