posted 03-28-2010 09:50 AM               

Space Cover #50, Apollo 13 Grumman Contractor Cover

With the 40th anniversary of Apollo 13 rapidly approaching, the Space Cover of the Week Bunch (or perhaps a more current term would be "Posse" ) will be focusing on that mission for the next few weeks.

Back in June we took a look at the Apollo 11 Bendix Contractor Cover, where the Bendix Launch Support Team created their own cachets and had them serviced for launch. Today we are going to revisit contractor covers, this time for Apollo 13.

Grumman Aircraft built the Lunar Module for Apollo. However, they did not get into the contractor cover arena until Apollo 12. Then they produced another for Apollo 13 (pictured above) and then stopped.

The Apollo 13 Grumman Contractor Cover had a cachet with a line-art drawing of a Lunar Module, the notation of LM-7 (the official designation for Apollo 13's Lunar Module "Aquarius"), the Grumman logo, and "Launch Team KSC" below that. It was postmarked using the standard KSC machine cancel (detectable by the dark filled NASA meatball) on Apollo 13's launch day, April 11, 1970.

Little did the Grumman folks, nor the cachet servicers know what a life-saving role that LM-7 would play just a few days later...

posted 09-01-2023 04:19 PM               

As Dennis pointed out, I don't think other Apollo/LM mission covers were printed after April 1970 by Grumman as far as I know.

But, there is another unusual Grumman rubber stamp cachet cover depicting a Grumman LM flying rocket design with text, "LM Rocket to KSC, by Technical Data Services, John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida." Unfortunately, there is no cancel on it and this is the only sample I have ever seen.

posted 09-01-2023 06:24 PM               

And funny that this came up just now! Just yesterday I got one of the Apollo 11 Grumman covers in the mail. See below...

posted 09-02-2023 01:57 AM               

As Dennis posted an image for Apollo 11 Grumman LM cover, please can you post an image for Apollo 12 Grumman LM-6 cover?

posted 09-03-2023 08:53 AM               

I've also included a different non-launch Apollo 11 Grumman stamped first day cover with the 10-cent "First Man on the Moon" issue (C76) that is rarely seen.

The bottom two covers were attested to be of Grumman origin by a lunar module worker (note "LEM 5" at top right of the cachet). He indicated to me, when acquiring his Apollo/LM Grumman memorabilia collection, that one of his Grumman co-worker buddies printed about 50+ of the solid black ink cachets for his division team's role in putting men on the lunar surface for the first time. I don't know if the cachet was printed before the actual flight or afterwards since there is a lunar landing date/time indicated at bottom.