posted 06-21-2015 06:47 PM               

Space Cover 322: Apollo 11 USS Hornet Dual Cancels

It is easy to find prime recovery ship covers from the USS Hornet for the Apollo 11 mission. Even the captain’s covers from the ship can be found from time to time. What is hard to find are dual cancel covers with different types of cancels from the USS Hornet for the mission.

The cover above is the only cover I have even seen with the two different size machine cancels. How it came to go through the two machine cancel devices is anyone’s guess. Here is a close-up of the cancels.

A more typical example of dual cancels exist for the combination of a hand cancel and a machine cancel. This would occur for two reasons I can think of. (1) the cover went in to the machine cancel device upside down and the stamps were the canceled with the hand stamp. Here are some examples.

Another cover is in the collection of David Ball.

And (2) the machine cancel is very light and the postal clerk added a hand cancel so the cover would have a date on it (seen on covers from the USS Hornet for Apollo 12).

Do you have or seen any other dual cancel covers for Apollo 11?