Samuel C. Phillips - NASA Service

NASA Service

In 1963, NASA Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight George E. Mueller admired Phillips' skill in managing the Minuteman and other Air Force projects, and proposed hiring him as program controller of Manned Space Flight. Phillips' Air Force superior agreed, on the condition that Phillips be hired as Director of the Apollo manned lunar landing program. In December, this was accomplished and Phillips was assigned to NASA. By this time, he had achieved the rank of major (two-star) general.

Phillips aggressively took on the job with constant daily meetings, phone contact, and visits to contractor sites which kept him on the road 75 per cent of the time. He described the job to New York Times reporter John Noble Wilford this way:

I'm at the level which knows all the things you have to know to make a major decision. Below the program director, there isn't anyone who has the whole picture. Above the program director, the men have so many other responsibilities.

In November 1965, Phillips took a team to North American Aviation in Downey, California, prime contractor for the Command/Service Module and also the Saturn V launch vehicle's S-II second stage, to investigate problems of delays, quality shortfalls and cost overruns. On December 19, he wrote a memo to NAA president Lee Atwood with a copy of a report of his findings and some recommended fixes, which he also sent to Mueller. Mueller also sent Atwood a follow-on letter strongly expressing his disappointment with the CSM and S-II problems, requiring a response by the end of January 1966 and a follow-on visit of Phillips' team in March.

When the Apollo 1 fire killed three astronauts in a ground test on January 27, 1967, just before what was to have been the first manned Apollo mission, a Congressional investigation uncovered the existence of what came to be known as "the Phillips report". NASA Administrator James E. Webb was called before Congress and testified he was unaware of the existence of this report, which ignited some Congressmen's and Senators' criticism of NASA and the selection of North American as the contractor. However, with the political support of President Lyndon B. Johnson, this controversy blew over and over the next eighteen months, Apollo got back on track toward manned missions and the goal of a first lunar landing before 1970.

At a small dinner party before the launch of Apollo 10 in May 1969, Dr. Wernher von Braun, director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., praised General Phillips as the one most responsible for pulling the many pieces of the Apollo program together and making them work, on time.

During the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 which achieved the program's manned landing goal, Phillips announced his intention to leave NASA and return to Air Force duty. During his NASA service, he had been promoted to Lieutenant (three-star) general.