posted 05-04-2013 07:25 AM               

Space Cover #212: Heritage Craft Apollo Space Covers

In our weekly Space Cover of the Week series we've presented many well-known space cover types, such as the popular Swanson SpaceCraft covers; Morris Beck's Prime Recovery Ship covers; Robert Rank's Space Voyage covers; George Goldey's covers; etc., but another lesser-known type, issued only for Apollo 7 through Apollo 17, deserves notice.

Dave Ouelette worked for the Bendix Corp. at KSC during the Apollo Program and created the well-done Heritage Craft space covers. His cover production only included the eleven Apollo manned missions, but during that four-year period, provided collectors with some very impressive covers.

His Heritage Craft cacheted covers typically have three small portraits of the crew members at the top and the mission emblem cachet below. He also issued covers with the usual 3-portraits, but below that a space scene relating to the flight.

Donald E. Wilkes, also a Bendix employee, is said to be the artist who designed the Heritage Craft cachets for Mr. Ouelette, along with the cachets for the Bendix covers and the Dow-Unicovers.

Surprisingly, for Apollo 11 only, Ouelette didn't do his standard covers, but instead did covers with black and white cachets picturing Wernher von Braun, along with a quote from him. Also for Apollo 11, he and Bendix were involved in producing blue and red cacheted covers picturing John Kennedy with a quote from him. These JFK covers have no reference to Heritage Craft and should be considered Bendix covers.

The covers at the top show an Apollo 7 Heritage cover, with the usual 3-heads and a space scene relating to Apollo 7, and below is a typical Heritage Craft 3-head and mission emblem cacheted cover for Apollo 13. Other Apollo 13 Heritage Craft covers had a small portrait of Jack Swigert added to the right of the cachet.

The top cover is an Apollo 14 Heritage Craft cover, with an official NASA/KSC rubber stamnp cachet added, and pictures Alan Shepard and pays tribute to Freedom 7 and Apollo 14. The bottom cover is a typical 3-head and space scene (with Lunar Rover) Heritage Craft cover for Apollo 15.

These final two Heritage Craft covers are an Apollo 17 3-head/mission emblem cover at top, and below, a cover also for Apollo 17, with a B&W cachet picturing Wernher von Braun that was originally issued for Apollo 11.

Many consider Heritage Craft covers among the best Apollo covers. A complete collection would be impressive and many of these covers can be found at Joe Frasketi's website here.

posted 05-04-2013 01:28 PM               

The first is an Apollo 12 KSC red meter postmark for their moon landing 11/19/69. These are a bit rarer. The second cover is an Apollo 14 KSC launch cover and what I like about this cover is that an AMVET label/stamp was added next to the Apollo 8 stamp. It shows the Mercury Redstone in launch phase which was a great tie in with Al Shepard being the Commander on Apollo 14.

Most of my Heritage Craft covers I bought over the years from Joe Frasketi who has always been a great source for covers.

posted 05-05-2013 10:52 PM               

Dave Oulette, a name from the past for me. I had forgotten that he was the maker. The first one I saw was for Apollo 8. I never saw the "fixed" or added picture one for Apollo 13 and never owned any, to be sure.

posted 05-06-2013 01:27 PM               

Recently I was able to purchase from an estate of the Ouelette family hundreds of the Heritage Crafts Apollo-era covers in 3-4 cover shoeboxes.

Altogether, considering every different type of cachet produced by the cover firm, I would say there were 18 different productions from Apollo 7 in 1968 through
Apollo 17 in 1972 that I am aware of.

For Apollo 13, the Ouelette/Wilkes team created three different cachet designs, one of which includes the Swigert imprint.

In commemoration of Apollo 15 in 1971, the team designed three cachets, which included a separate cachet design for the "United States In Space...A Decade of Achievement" 8-cent twin-stamp first day cover issue.

The JFK design, which I've always considered more of an Ouelette/Heritage production, was actually done in two versions that included an imprint, which is rarely seen, celebrating the 10th anniversary of manned spaceflight.

Keep in mind there is another Apollo cachet production series, by KSC's Bendix Launch Support Division, that included the cachet artwork of Wilkes, a Bendix worker, along with his fellow-Bendix buddy Ouelette.

The official Bendix cover series started in 1967 with "Saluting NASA on its Ninth Anniversary" cancelled with the new "Gemini-twins" 5-cent stamps for the first day issue on Sept. 29, 1967. This "first" cover is rarely seen these days.

Their next space cover was issued five weeks later for the AS-501/Apollo 4 launch, the nation's first Saturn V moon rocket test flight, from Kennedy's Launch Complex 39A.

The entire series from Bendix would be a total of 15 different cachet covers from 1967-72.

Many of the earlier covers inside had a copy of a letter from Bendix general manager, Frank Vaughn, at the time. Later issues contained special informative insert card-folders from Bendix Launch Support Division.

posted 05-06-2013 03:06 PM               

I do know for fact, though, while visiting with Dave Ouelette back in the mid-1970s, he showed me a complete collection of his cachet-produced Apollo launch-day covers from 7-17, all crew-signed! It completely floored me when seeing them all together like this.

During that same visit with him, he told me that most, if not all, of the Apollo crews
while in training here did receive a number of his Heritage cachet covers at no cost. In return, each crew would sign and return back to him 3-6 of the same cover types.

Perhaps speaking completely "unofficial," I've only see a few of the Heritage signed
"crew quarters" early Apollo mission covers and got a few myself.

posted 05-06-2013 03:52 PM               

I am thinking it was the von Braun or Dow cachet, but that is only a guess and nothing more.

Certainly, though, I'll agree with you. Why Ouelette didn't continue with the 3-heads and mission emblem for Apollo 11 is beyond me. I suppose he wanted to do something completely different for man's first lunar landing and had Wilkes design the von Braun and JFK tribute artwork cachet covers.

There may also be a possibility that Dow-Unicover paid Ouelette for the Wilkes-designed Apollo 11 artwork, perhaps exclusively, as so many of the Dow covers were printed for many different kinds of philatelic uses in 1969.

With already three different Apollo 11 related cachet designs by Wilkes, maybe Ouelette felt there was no need for another design, this one, with the normal 3-heads over the mission patch design.

posted 05-07-2013 11:24 AM               

It appears that Dave had his Apollo 7, 8 and 9 covers printed in only one color (Apollo 7 blue, Apollo 8 red and Apollo 9 green), but with Apollo 10, started using more than one color.

Thanks to Tim Preston, I've been able to show here another Heritage Craft cover, this one for Apollo 8 and it's the one that sold in the last Heritage Auction for over $4,000!

posted 05-07-2013 01:15 PM               

Also, while on the same topic, I could include copies of other related covers that were produced by aerospace companies and NASA divisions here at Kennedy and the Cape.

Some of my favorites, in addition to Heritage Crafts and Bendix, were the NASA Launch Vehicle Operations (LVO) Apollo launch day #10-size covers from KSC. Inside each was a hand-signed letter, usually addressed to a LVO employee, by directorate Hans Gruene of the original German/U.S. von Braun rocket development team.

Other covers from the Apollo/Skylab era, that are similar, were produced by Grumman, Boeing, TWA (another favorite of mine), Rocketdyne, and the KSC fire service departments with separate cachet covers done for the astronaut rescue team, the fire prevention bureau, and the unit's fire department-combat division.

posted 04-10-2014 03:21 PM               

Having recently acquired one of these crew-signed Apollo 12 Heritage Craft covers myself, I am curious about whether all crew-signed ones could be classified as "insurance covers" or only those labeled as such my a crew member who signed it.

posted 11-03-2014 12:59 PM               

After getting a phone call from a gentleman that had met me many years ago, and from a recommendation he got from a space museum official here locally, we had agreed to meet after his arrival on a bus from a Melbourne bus station to Merritt Island's main shopping mall, which was on the same bus route.

The signed Apollo covers in reference to above from several postings, originally from the Dave Ouellette/Don Wiles (spelled this way) collection, has finally surfaced after first-hand seeing the primary crew signed Apollo cover set more than 40 years ago!

I am planning to have a set of the signed covers, which are spectacular and indeed a rare find, on display and for possible purchase during this weekend's ASF Astronaut Autograph and Memorabilia show at the KSCVC (Nov. 8-9, 2014).

But to answer a few questions from prior postings of yours, Bob, I was able to acquire 3 signed Apollo 11 covers; 1 of Dave's Bendix Launch Support Division cachet and 2 others with the popular Dow printed cachets, also known as a type 2 insurance cover if owned by the crew members and families.

The Apollo 8 crew signed covers, which are superb in my opinion, are just classics! Again, 1 of them is a Bendix cachet with 2 Heritage Crafts' issues.

All Apollo flights are represented (except Apollo 7) with either 3-6 crew signed covers, mostly with Dave's Bendix and Heritage Crafts (HC) productions.

For the final Apollo 17 lunar voyage, 1 of 4, all HC issues, was signed by all three crewmen. But Jack Schmitt was not included on the other three.

ALL of the Apollo-signed covers were without question signed by the Apollo astronaut flight crews BEFORE their launch to the moon (but of course with Apollo 9 being an earth orbital mission).

As the story goes, Dave was able to get anywhere from 3-6 of his produced Apollo Bendix and HC printed cachet covers signed by the crews with the help of Hal Collins, supervisor of KSC's astronaut crew quarters, during the Apollo era.

In exchange for signing some covers to Dave and Don, the crewmen were given at no cost small quantities of their mission's produced Bendix and HC cachet covers.

When examining and purchasing aerospace collections from crew quarters' workers, of which there were only about 15 people that had full daily badge-clearances, similar covers could be found of the Bendix and HC productions in their own acquisitions, while in addition to of course, their own crew insurance covers as well.

Hard to believe, 40-some years ago, the exact same collection that Dave himself showed to me--as a high school student--comes back around in full circle!