The legend of the John Young’s infamous corned-beef sandwich

If you take a drive through Cocoa Beach, Florida and put “900 N Atlantic Ave” in your navigation, you can easily find a bite to eat and a place to stay but you would also be at the starting point for one of the great stories of the Gemini Program. You’d be standing at what used to be the location of Wolfie’s.

A journey back to Wolfie’s is a trip back to an earlier time when we knew less about flying in space and took more risks, and in this case, one risk was taken out of sheer bravado, rebelliousness and the basic desire for something good to eat. This story is about what seemed to be a small flout of the rules that ended up catching too much attention.

Enter: Wally Schirra. A Mercury veteran who would go on to command Gemini 6A and Apollo 7 before retiring to spend some time at the news desk with Walter Cronkite before moving away from spaceflight altogether. He was known for his wit, for being a joker, for being smooth with the ladies and for never being too far away from a Cutty Shark and water. The preflight hours of Gemini 3 found Schirra walking into Wolfie’s in Cocoa Beach and purchasing a corned beef sandwich to-go for his friend (and maybe a little something for himself).

In a covert operation that would’ve been labeled as “Meh” by the CIA, Schirra managed to pass the sandwich along to Gemini 3 pilot John W. Young. Young, along with his mission commander Gus Grissom, lifted off on March 23rd, 1965 for a trip that would last a bit under 5 hours. After about an hour and 45 minutes (according to the official mission transcript from NASA of the onboard recorders) we get our first mention of food.

Back in the early days, many things were still being figured out about human spaceflight, including food. Naturally, astronauts get hungry just like every other human in the world and with missions getting closer to being measured in days, a big breakfast before liftoff wasn’t going to cut it for much longer. And while this mission was just a short trip around the block, one of the things that the lab coats wanted the crew to test out was some food.

The food that was packed (officially) on Gemini 3 was meant as more of a sample tray than a full meal to satiate the crew. Reading through the transcript, there’s mention of grapefruit juice, a chicken leg and some applesauce with a request of a pork chop to go along with it. It seems that even packaging ended up being tested because at one point there are some complaints about it. Young says that opening one package was a “dexterity test” and that the grapefruit juice was “really trying to crawl out of there.”

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But in the midst of meal time, out comes the infamous sandwich. In this case, the official transcript doesn’t really convey the full story and some parts may be missed. If you want to check it out at the link above, I found it mentioned on page 45. A better account says that Young pulled the sandwich out of his pocket and casually offered some to Grissom. After sharing a few bites, the sandwich was returned to Young’s pocket out of a growing concern about crumbs breaking off. And it’s a legitimate concern, too. Crumbs floating off on their own can create a hazard, especially if they get in to the small nooks near switches and electrical circuits with the chance of creating a short. Afterwards, there was talk about trying a chicken leg and the aforementioned grapefruit juice. Then the mission proceeded normally all the way to splashdown.

The sandwich did make a comeback after splashdown, but not the one in Young’s pocket. With the heat of the sun, the rolling of the ocean and the wait for rescue teams after coming in a ways away from their target, Young got to sample the sandwich again but in reverse. Yep, it was so nice he had to try it twice!

It’s not really clear how the sandwich was discovered. Deke Slayton, the head of the astronaut office, knew. He didn’t give his approval for the illicit sammy but he also didn’t say no. He is also probably not one to spill the beans. Maybe it was found by a NASA tech who was going through the suits after the crew was out of them. Maybe Young mentioned his seasickness to the doc? Either way, the corned beef sandwich blew up into something of a minor scandal.

An unintended lesson learned for NASA

The press quickly jumped on the story of the sandwich smuggler, at times, overshadowing the success of the mission. Then some lawmakers in Congress made it an issue once they’d heard about it. Ultimately, reprimands were handed out, new and more stringent rules came out about what astronauts could take aboard with them and then the issue was laid to rest.

Now decades later, the lesson about the crumbs is still important. Videos from space regularly show astronauts playing with their food and how different it is from what we consume on the ground. Ask any old timer astronaut and they’ll agree that the menus have gotten better. Gone are the days are the meals in a tube (mostly) and now on the ISS, cargo missions regularly bring fresh fruits, vegetables and treats. The food in space is getting closer and closer to resembling that on the ground just with some different ingredients. And now, yes, that also includes sandwiches.