Everything you never knew you wanted to know about the Mercury Project
Beach abort tests
From RixWiki
A small number of tests of the escape tower under pad abort conditions were conducted.
On July 22, 1959, a Mercury boilerplate spacecraft was launched from the ground using the escape motor. The same boilerplate capsule was later used for the LJ-1A mission. A similar test was performed six days later.
A third beach abort test took place on May 9, 1960 using the first production Mercury spacecraft
