Ken Havekotte
Member Posts: 3377
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001
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posted 01-27-2022 08:32 PM
   
Little is known about the covers depicted below. It would appear that the NASA prime contractor for the Apollo lunar module program, Grumman Aircraft (Aerospace) Engineering Corp. in Bethpage, New York, produced company cachet covers for their role in the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 lunar landing missions in 1969. To the best of my knowledge, none of the Apollo 11/LM-5 black-ink printed covers (two cachet types) never received any mission postal cancellations for launch or lunar landing in July 1969. But one of them did receive a first day issue cancellation of the new 10-cent airmail "First Man on the Moon" postage stamp on Sept. 9, 1969. Even to this day, nearly 53 years later since the historic first manned landing and surface exploration on another celestial body, have I not found nor seen a single Grumman/LM-5 cover with either a Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center, or a Titusville postmark in Florida. During the golden anniversary of Apollo 11 in July 2019, though, that did change. I had about 20 or more unused (mint) Grumman/LM-5 cachet covers, therefore, I was thinking it might be a good idea to have appropriate postal cancels applied to the unstamped and uncancelled covers for the 50th anniversary. Some of the covers are above with a variety of postal cancels that includes special anniversary pictorial strikes at the Cape/KSC. Of particular note, though, one of the Apollo 11 cover types does have the date and time of LM-5/Eagle's touchdown on the lunar surface. This may indicate that this cachet cover- type by Grumman(?) might had been printed after the moon landing or completion of the 9-day epic lunar voyage. If that had been the case, perhaps there were no mission cancels in July at all. But as you can see from one of the cachet designs, it does have the official C76 first day issue six weeks later of the moon stamp with Armstrong climbing down the LM ladder a second or two before setting foot on the lunar surface. I had acquired most of my LM-5 covers from a couple of LM/Grumman workers that had been employed at the Florida spaceport when examining their aerospace collections. So it would seem more likely that the printed covers were Grumman authentic in someway or another and from viewing the added Grumman company logo on some of them. The Apollo 12/LM-6 cachet cover, one that I like very much, does in fact have mission cancels in November 1969 from the Astronaut Trail Station in Titusville, Florida. Does anyone know the mysterious origin and/or background of the three Grumman covers? Were they only printed for the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 flights and how were they distributed? Did they originate from Grumman's lunar module primary factory and headquarters in Bethpage, or were they provided by a Grumman employee here at the Cape? And a final question would be if that person had them produced for his Grumman team mates, had them on sale at Grumman's exchange gift shop on Center, or just for his own private use as a space cover stamp collector? The Grumman KSC-workers that I had gotten most of the covers from have no recollection of how the came about receiving them. |
Ken Havekotte
Member Posts: 3377
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001
|
posted 01-28-2022 10:20 AM
Oh my gosh, Dennis, I had forgotten about the Grumman cover issue for Apollo 13 (I do have one of them and will post it soon), but had it placed in a different cover box area. Thanks for the update that will include three Apollo LM/Grumman missions with Apollo 11 (perhaps post flight), Apollo 12, and now Apollo 13.Interesting to note that the same lunar module illustration had been used for one of the Apollo 11 cachet types, but also, "Launch Team KSC" had been printed at the bottom of the Apollo 13 launch cover. Perhaps the series of Grumman covers was indeed the idea of a KSC-based employee. It would seem there would be subsequent similar covers in the later Apollo series, but I just can't recall seeing any of them from Apollos 14-17. Anybody else have other covers to show and with more information about them? |
Ken Havekotte
Member Posts: 3377
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001
|
posted 01-29-2022 05:06 PM
Here is my only Apollo 13 LM/Grumman cover, which appears to be a replica of the one you have, Dennis, but for one difference. Mine has a KSC postmark strike with a KSC Type 2 machine cancel of a white background NASA meatball logo in the die hub. Other than that, it's just about the same as yours, but I did notice a small peelable address label that had been removed from mine.It would be good to know if other Apollo LM/Grumman covers were produced for the later lunar landing flights as I have always wondered about them.  |
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