posted 01-20-2013 09:26 AM               

Space Cover #197, So, Which One is It? Recovery Ship Cover for John Glenn's Mission

It was a space cover event of historical consequence and true serendipity. Astronaut John Glenn had orbited the Earth after his successful launch in Mercury Atlas-6 and orbital spaceflight in spacecraft Friendship 7. Upon completion of his flight and splashdown near Grand Turk Island that afternoon, John Glenn was recovered by U.S. Navy destroyer, USS Noa, DD-841.

The U.S. Post Office, without prior notice to the general public, had just released new Project Mercury stamps to 305 U.S. post offices. The stamps had been printed in secret to commemorate Glenn's epic flight after his successful splashdown. Primary recovery ship covers were cancelled for Glenn's recovery onboard USS Noa with the new Project Mercury stamps.

But, there was a problem. The newly released Project Mercury stamps used on the covers were not on the ship until after the ship returned to port, February 23, 1962. So, this wonderful cover commemorating Glenn's orbital flight with the new Project Mercury stamp, is known as being a backdated cover.

The USS Noa cover with the Project Mercury stamp and canceled for February 20, 1962, is little more than a conversation piece, now. It is a space cover oddity to have as a reference copy in one's space cover collection and is not the "knock-it-out-of-the-park" cover it should have been.

So, if a collector can find this cover with a different stamp that would have been onboard USS Noa, does that solve this recovery ship conundrum? The answer, surprisingly, is no, it doesn't.

The cover pictured above without the Project Mercury stamp, in this case, the stamp used is an earlier U.S. airmail stamp, and for many years, this cover without the Project Mercury stamp was believed to be the cover to have for Glenn's recovery by USS Noa. But this cover had a serious problem as well. It has no PM time stamp in the hand cancel signifying the time of Noa's recovery of astronaut Glenn.

Again, collectors were in dismay and unsure as to what cover they needed to have for this important U.S. space event for America's first manned orbital spaceflight. Subsequently, after serious consideration, collectors determined that this cover still was not the one that space cover collectors needed to have.

After discussion among members of the space cover collecting community including the Federation Internationale de Philatelie and the American Philatelic Society's Space Unit, also known as the Space Topics Study Group, general consensus now indicates that the USS Noa hand cancel for February 20, 1962, with PM time stamp in the ship's hand cancel is the preferred cancel to have for Glenn's recovery and the premium cover for Glenn's recovery to be added to your space cover collection.

The cover shown is one such cover obtained for a modest price at a space cover auction in New York City six years ago. Surprisingly, the cover received only half-hearted bidding, as the inclusion of PM in the ship's hand cancel kept many experienced bidders from being seriously interested in the cover. It is now, however, the premium cover space cover collectors opt to have in their collections for USS Noa's recovery of Glenn. Don't pass it by if you should see it.

A recent cover stuffer with no stamps was auctioned on eBay for USS Noa's recovery of Glenn. It further reopens the original PM or no PM time stamp cancel discussion.

The USS Noa cover stuffer pictured is cancelled with both the recovery date hand cancel without PM in the ship's cancel February 20, 1962, and it also has the ship's red double-ring cancel for the ship's return to port, February 23, 1962. In our earlier discussions, it was known that the ship's crew ran out of stamps and envelopes for the crew members to have a cover for their ship's recovery of Glenn. In this situation, the ever resourceful ship's sailors used stuffers taken-out of the covers they were servicing and servicing the cover stuffers for this historical event, also.

As a result, the discussion concerning what cancel to have was renewed because the stuffer's cancel for the recovery date did not have PM in the time stamp in the Noa's hand cancel indicating that perhaps the covers without PM in the cancels were still premium recovery ship cancels to have and were again ok as cancels on covers for USS Noa's recovery of Glenn.

Further credence for Glenn's recovery by USS Noa with the ship's cancel without PM in the time stamp of the hand cancel was further advanced in finding this interesting cover. Made by a sailor, the cover was onboard USS Noa and produced from an oversized and watermarked U.S. Government cover that was obtained by a crew member, cut-down in size, scotch taped on the left side, and then mailed from the Noa crew member to a space cover collector in Washington, D.C.

And note, the cover mailed does not have a PM time stamp in the ship's hand cancel. The discussion now has gone full circle and is back to square one of our original discussion.

The discussion concerning astronaut John Glenn's epic orbital space flight and recovery near Grand Turk Island in the Atlantic Ocean by USS Noa, DD-841, February 20, 1962, will be coming-up on 51 years of ongoing review and discussion as of next month, February, 20, 2013. And, the answer to the question I posed is...

posted 01-22-2013 09:08 AM               

1) If we assume the PM covers are legitimate than why would some covers have been postmarked with a time stamp and some not. Look at the next cover.

Issued just after the Feb 20 cover, it contains a time stamp. Also look at USS Noa covers from Gemini 8. They all have a time slug. The only covers that we are sure of that don't have a time slug are the backdated ones. Is this just a coincident? I think not.

Secondly, remember that the USS Noa was a Secondary Recovery Ship (SRS) and was not expected to recovery Glenn. Now if you look at the number of covers available from the other (non-Carrier) SRSs, the number is tiny. In fact I doubt I've seen half a dozen from any of them and none from most. Yet, while still quite rare, the Feb 20 non-Mercury stamped covers appear to be available in significantly larger numbers than I would expect. While the PM time stamp covers are exceedingly rare as I would have expected from a SRS.

I believe that the explanation is that the ship's Postal Officer ran out of Project Mercury stamps when backdating and for a relatively small number of covers used whatever stamps were available. It is also possible that some crew members just grabbed whatever stamps they had and used those. These covers may have been created before the Project Mercury stamps were brought aboard. That would also explain Steve's cover from a crew member. The crew member made up the cover before supplies were brought aboard the Noa and used whatever was available, including a non-Mercury stamp. He than either had it backdated or left it with the PO to be backdated. Much more likely than the alternative.

posted 01-22-2013 10:40 AM               

As already pointed out, USS Noa was only SRS for John Glenn's histroic Mercury flight. Thus only very few collectors and dealers sent covers to the ship's postal clerk. One of them was Trudy Woods. Upon Glenn's return to earth more collectors heard that USS Noa recovered the astronaut. Immediately they sent covers, which arrived on board USS Noa on 2/23/1961. I can imagine, the postal clerk was kind enough to postmark them with the date 2/20/1961. For this he used the ship's postmark without AM or PM.

posted 01-24-2013 06:51 AM               

What seems to have happened is that the Noa was in port and the PO decided to backdate approximately 300 covers and used a postmarker without a time slug. Whether this was deliberate or not we don't know. When it came to postmarking the approximately 1500 with a 23 date he just changed the day slug without bothering to add the time slug (of course it could have been the other way round).

posted 01-26-2013 10:00 AM               

The Randolph was the Prime Recovery Ship while the Noa actually recovered Glenn. This is analagous to Gemini 8 where the USS Boxer was the designated PRS but Armstrong and Scott were actually recovered by the USS Leonard Mason.

posted 01-26-2013 04:19 PM               

The late Richard Learn and I discussed this at length many years ago. It was agreed that USS Noa covers with the time slug were undoubtedly on board for the recovery. We also agreed that without any facts to the contrary, ANY cover with a Feb 20 1962 cancel without a Project Mercury stamp should be considered acceptable. Two reasons lead us to this conclusion.

1. For most of the recoveries starting with Gemini-2, there were many hundreds and in some cases thousands of covers postmarked with the recovery date. It should not be assumed that all covers were postmarked on the actual recovery day. If they were not postmarked on the recovery day but were done say the day after does that then make them backdated?

2. You can send in covers for a First Day of Issue cancel or most other special cancel up to 30 days after the event. These covers are then obviously backdated. I have many covers in my collection that fall into this category. Does that make them less desirable than a cover that was there for the actual event? Backdating has become a nasty term for cover collectors yet it is done many many times and is considered an acceptable practice.

posted 01-27-2013 07:01 AM               

There are also backdated covers from other ships such as:

This has led to some writers stating that all ship covers postmarked on the 20 and with Project Mercury stamps are backdated. This is not correct. If a ship was actually in port on the 20 it was quite possible for the PO or a crew member to go ashore, purchase some stamps, and get back in time for a correct postmark. A possible example is shown below where personal correspondence indicates that this cover is probably not backdated.

Regarding Eddie's comments I must disagree. Firstly, if you consider backdated covers with a non Project Mercury stamp as OK, it is only logical to do the stamp for Project Mercury stamped covers. There is no logical difference between the two.

Second, there is a difference between covers which are authorized to be backdated due to the volume of covers (they are official and were on board the ship on the recovery date) and the USS Noa covers which were unofficial and most were not aboard the ship during recovery.

Regarding Eddie's specific points:

1. Maybe this is true, although I have not seen any actual evidence to that effect, but at least the stamped covers were aboard the ship on the recovery date and were postmarked the next day due to the work load. Neither point is true of the USS Noa covers.

2. I agree that most FDCs have been forward dated or backdated for some time. In many cases (at least in Australia), they are not even postmarked in the city stated on the postmark! And don't talk about Territory FDCs. They aren't even postmarked in the stated Territory. However, FDCs are a special case and can't be compared to unauthorized backdating.

posted 01-11-2022 12:09 PM               

Take for instance the Apollo 11 launch; The major Florida Space Coast postal stations had a requirement that all space cover mail had to be received before or "on" the day of their requested postal cancellations. It would be very time consuming and impractical to hand and machine cancel every received launch day cover before next day had arrived.

It was just not possible to do so, therefore, lots of space mail had to be processed in the next coming days. Are those covers backdated? My answer to that question is a simple "No" since they had been received at the postal station in time. Can this same scenario apply to MA-6's splashdown and recovery by the USS Noa?

It was not uncommon to hold covers a few days or more afterwards, so long as they were on-site at the P.O. during that-particular launch day-event. The 30-day rule, in most cases during those years, had only applied to official first day covers, but did not normally apply for other non-FDI events as Ross had pointed out.

posted 01-11-2022 02:38 PM               

They appear to be the standard Noa cancelled covers with Project Mercury stamps on either Feb. 20 or 23. Two of the first day issue covers, using a similar Noa cachet-type cover, cancelled again on their back-side surfaces with a Cape Canaveral machine cancel for the first anniversary. Both of them have specific mission Artopage-type rubber stamp cachets applied, but with slightly different designs (no big deal of course with the anniversary cancels). At the moment, I am not seeing any non-Mercury postage used on my Noa covers, but will keep looking on other collections that I have acquired throughout the decades.

One of the type-written addressed covers does have a USS Randolph hand cancel along with a vintage Glenn autograph for splashdown, but with no cachet.

posted 01-11-2022 03:28 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Ken Havekotte:
...it doesn't show John Glenn, but rather Alan Shepard!

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