Remembering Apollo 1 on 54th anniversary of the disaster Share: CAPE CANAVERAL, FL -- On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy's Launch Complex during a preflight test. The three astronauts scheduled to make the first Apollo space flight were killed when a fire swept through the command module. Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were all killed. They were the first American astronauts to die in a spacecraft. The exhaustive investigation of the fire and extensive reworking of the Apollo command modules postponed crewed launches until NASA officials cleared them for flight.