Editing Apollo program (section)

====Program delays====
The spacecraft for the AS-202 and AS-204 missions were delivered by North American Aviation to the Kennedy Space Center with long lists of equipment problems which had to be corrected before flight; these delays caused the launch of AS-202 to slip behind AS-203, and eliminated hopes the first crewed mission might be ready to launch as soon as November 1966, concurrently with the last Gemini mission. Eventually, the planned AS-204 flight date was pushed to February 21, 1967.<ref name="SP4029">{{Cite web |title=Apollo 1: The Fire |url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_01a_Summary.htm |date=1967-01-27|access-date=2023-02-12 |website=history.nasa.gov}}</ref>

North American Aviation was prime contractor not only for the Apollo CSM, but for the Saturn{{nbsp}}V [[S-II]] second stage as well, and delays in this stage pushed the first uncrewed Saturn{{nbsp}}V flight AS-501 from late 1966 to November 1967. (The initial assembly of AS-501 had to use a dummy spacer spool in place of the stage.)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Benson |first1=Charles D. |last2=Faherty |first2=William Barnaby |title=Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations |url=http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4204/contents.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080123133438/http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4204/contents.html |archive-date=January 23, 2008 |access-date=August 1, 2013 |series=The NASA History Series |date=1978 |publisher=Scientific and Technical Information Office, NASA |location=Washington, D.C. |oclc=3608505 |lccn=77029118 |id=NASA SP-4204 |chapter=Delay after Delay after Delay |chapter-url=http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4204/ch19-3.html |url-status=live}}</ref>

The problems with North American were severe enough in late 1965 to cause Manned Space Flight Administrator George Mueller to appoint program director Samuel Phillips to head a "[[tiger team]]" to investigate North American's problems and identify corrections. Phillips documented his findings in a December 19 letter to NAA president [[Lee Atwood]], with a strongly worded letter by Mueller, and also gave a presentation of the results to Mueller and Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans.<ref>NASA never volunteered the tiger team findings to the US Congress in the course of its regular oversight, but its existence was publicly disclosed as "the Phillips report" in the course of the Senate investigation into the Apollo 204 fire. {{cite web |url=https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/phillip1.html |title=The Phillips Report |date=October 22, 2004 |publisher=NASA History Office |access-date=April 14, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100415050958/https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/phillip1.html |archive-date=April 15, 2010 |url-status=live}}</ref> Meanwhile, [[Grumman]] was also encountering problems with the Lunar Module, eliminating hopes it would be ready for crewed flight in 1967, not long after the first crewed CSM flights.{{sfn|Brooks|Grimwood|Swenson|1979|loc=Ch. 7.4: [http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4205/ch7-4.html "The LEM Test Program: A Pacing Item"]}}