The following is from Randall Knife Society newsletter #12, November 1991. The article is by David James Marshall.
MARSHALL:THE ORIGINAL OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD SURVIVAL KNIFE
The following first appeared in the Fall issue of Knives Illustrated and is reprinted here with their permission.
May 15th, 1963. Faith 7, last of the Mercury manned space capsules, sits atop a modified ballistic missile booster, the Atlas 6 rocket. Strapped into a capsule smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle is Air force Major Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., "Gordo" to his friends and fellow Mercury astronauts. In its day, the Mercury capsule was the pinnacle of modem technology. It seems ironic that strapped to Major Cooper's leg was man's oldest tool, a sturdy knife.
The flight of Faith 7 lasted 34 hours 20 minutes. The longest of all the Mercury flights. It was the culmination of years of scientific research and rigorous training of the Mercury Astronauts. The full story of the Mercury Project is better left to historians, Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff", and the astronauts own book, "We Seven", by Malcolm Scott Carpenter. This article will instead focus on the astronaut's knife itself.
The Astronauts knife was originally conceived by Gordon Cooper and designed jointly with W.D. "Bo" Randall. The Astronaut Knife's primary purpose was its intended use as an escape tool. Exploding bolts and emergency escape systems were in their infancy during the Mercury program. The astronauts wanted a knife that would cut through their harnesses if necessary and still have enough edge and strength left to cut their way out of the capsule itself. They meant to accomplish this by cutting through the cold steel bolts securing the main hatch. I've seen an original Mercury capsule at the Astronaut Hall of Fame outside the main gates of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Those bolts looked to be 1/2 to 5/8 inch in size. Pretty hefty, but the Astro Knife, as it came to be known, was up to the task.
The Astro Knife's secondary task was to be a terrestrial survival knife. Funny, nowadays we don't really consider a knife with a 5-1/2 inch blade to be a "real" survival knife. No foot long blade, no saw teeth, no round hollow handle with a compass in the end cap, etc. John Rambo was still in diapers in the early 60's. The Mercury Astronauts had real life survival scenario's to contend with.
The math processes required to drop a 3000 lb. capsule moving at orbital speeds through a tiny re-entry window existed on paper only. Rather than the ideal splash down areas off the Atlantic coast, a miscalculation could have sent the astronauts into literally any environment on the planet.
Anticipating this, all seven Mercury astronauts spent months in survival camps around the world and learning to live off the land using only the equipment they would carry with them in the capsule. This is one reason the Randall Astro Knife is so small by today's standards. The knife was carried in a pouch strapped to Major Cooper's leg while aboard Faith 7. Basically, that was the only place out of the way enough in the cramped confines of the Mercury capsule. In the photo of the knife itself, there remains a band of the same material used in the Mercury space suits. On it is the snap that held the knife secured in its sheath and the fabric of the leg pouch itself. Even a leather sheath was deemed too heavy and too wasteful of valuable space in the capsule. Basically, the Astronauts didn't so much sit in their capsule, they wore it.
The knife itself is only a little over 10 inches in length. It was constructed of Bo Randall's best forged steel and was then rhodium plated. This was done for two reasons. Number one was to protect the blade from the ravages of salt water and other hostile environments. Number two is conjecture on my part. Rhodium has little tendency to produce sparks when struck against another metal surface. The atmosphere in the Mercury capsule and in the pilot's suits was nearly pure oxygen. Sparks might have started an almost instantly fatal fire inside the capsule.
This would prove tragically true 4 years later on January 27, 1967 when fire swept through the cockpit of the Apollo I command module as it sat on the launch pad undergoing compatibility tests. One of the original Mercury astronauts, Air Force Lt. Colonel Virgil "Gus" Grissom, was killed as were Lt. Colonel Edward White and Navy Lt. Commander Roger Chaffe.
In the tradition of the modern survival knife, there is storage within the handle of the Randall Astro Knife. Not the round hollow handle so popular today, but a much stronger system. Rather than a notoriously weak, short tang soldered to a piece of pipe handle, the astronaut knife had the tang drilled out in the center in a long oval. The strongest portion of the tang remains so that overall strength is not compromised. The handle scales are hollowed out and attached with removable bolts to allow access to the items stored within.
So popular was this particular knife that Randall Knives began selling the Astro Model 17 to the general public in 1962, at the height of the Mercury Project. Each astronaut received one, as did the Head of Project Mercury, Dr. Robert Gilruth. Two spares were made at the time. Of the original knives, almost all survive today. Gus Grissom lost one of the spare knives when his capsule, Liberty Bell 7, sank after splash down. Two were donated to the Smithsonian Institute. The knife pictured above is the actual knife carried into space by Major Cooper aboard Faith 7.
When the Mercury program ended, a grateful "Gordo" Cooper, now Colonel Cooper (Ret.), presented his own knife to Bo Randall in appreciation for his many contributions to project Mercury. And I mean that literally. Bo Randall never asked for, nor did he ever receive, any financial compensation for the original Astronaut Knives.
Col. Cooper's knife has resided in the privacy of Bo Randall's home since 1963 and to my knowledge has never been placed on public display. *** Neither has it been photographed, though I've seen references to this knife in other magazine articles.*** Bo Randall's son, Gary Randall, graciously permitted me to photograph Col. Cooper's knife when I visited the Randall Knife Museum in the Spring of 1990. I was attending the Navy Recruiter Orientation School in Orlando, Florida at the time and had gone into their office to pay for a stag handled Model 5 I had purchased out of the showroom. There I saw a Randall Model 1 fighting knife ordered by Apollo astronaut, Brigadier General Thomas Stafford, but for some reason was never picked up.
General Stafford (Ret.) is best remembered as the commander of the joint Apollo/Soyuz Mission on July 17th, 1975 and the famous "handshake in space" when the American and Soviet capsules linked up in orbit.
I had asked Gary Randall for permission to photo-graph General Stafford's knife and do a story on it. He said he had a better knife on which to base my article, the knife you see pictured above. A little piece of Americana, and a proud reminder of one of this nation's greatest achieve-ments. ///// Text and Photos by David James Marshall
*** Editor's Note: Since Bo's death Mrs. Randall asked that since this knife was one of Bo's most cherished possessions that it be displayed in the Randall show room along with the corresponding letters.
