was recovered in the Atlantic ocean southeast of Cape Canaveral by the . While on the Gemini mission, Schirra played a Christmas practical joke on the flight controllers by first reporting a mock UFO (implying Santa Claus) sighting, then playing "Jingle Bells" on a four-hole Hohner harmonica he had smuggled on board, accompanied by Stafford on sleigh bells. Apollo program In mid-1966, Schirra was assigned to command a three-man Apollo crew with Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham to make the second crewed flight test of the Apollo Command/Service Module, with a mission profile identical to Apollo 1. Schirra argued against a repeat mission, and his crew became the backup crew for Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Schirra's crew conducted tests in the command module on January 26, 1967, and were en route to Houston the next day when Grissom and his crew were killed in a fire during a test. Schirra's crew became the prime crew of the first crewed flight. This became Apollo 7 in the program's revised mission numbering plan, and was delayed until the fall of 1968 while safety improvements were made to the Command Module. Schirra had gained a sense of security from having Guenter Wendt, a McDonnell Aircraft employee, as the pad leader responsible for the spacecraft's launch readiness. As the Apollo contractor was now North American Aviation, Wendt was no longer pad leader. After the Apollo 1 accident, Schirra felt so strongly he wanted none other than Wendt as pad leader for his Apollo flight, that he convinced Deke Slayton and North American's launch operations manager Bastian "Buzz" Hello to hire Wendt as Apollo 7 pad leader. Wendt remained pad leader for the remainder of the Apollo and Skylab programs, and stayed on with NASA into the Space Shuttle program before retiring. However, Schirra was prevented from naming his spacecraft Phoenix in honor of the Apollo 1 crew, because some believed that its nickname as a metaphor for "fire" might be misunderstood. Apollo 7 was launched on October 11, 1968, making Schirra the first person to fly in space three times. Prior to launch, Schirra had objected because of high winds, which could have injured the astronauts in the event of an abort within the first minute of the mission. After reaching orbit, the Apollo 7 CSM performed space rendezvous and docking exercises with the S-4B stage to simulate retrieving