Space Cover #400: Apollo Fire at 50Above is a Swanson self-serve cachet, machine canceled at Patrick Air Force Base, FL the evening of January 27, 1967. That evening, at 6:31 pm, the Apollo 1 crew of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee perished when the interior of their Apollo capsule was consumed in fire during a closed-hatch test at Cape Canaveral. Their mission was to have launched less than a month later.
Patrick Air Force Base (we'll call it PAFB for short now) was the headquarters for the Air Force operation at Cape Canaveral and was about 15 miles down the coast from the Cape. So, why a PAFB cancellation and not a Cape Canaveral cancellation for this event? Well, the accident happened at 6:31 pm. The Cape Canaveral post office closed at 7:00 pm. The consensus among collectors is that it is highly unlikely that news of the accident got out to the public, that someone gathered envelopes, took them to the Cape post office, and got them postmarked within 29 minutes after the accident. Cape cancels for January 27, 1967 have been seen, but are generally considered to be backdated. However, the PAFB post office was open later that night (does anyone here know the exact closing time?) and is considered more likely to have actually serviced covers that night. So, that's why the PAFB cancel was shown here.
I've also seen KSC postmarks and Satellite Beach postmarks for January 27, 1967, and have heard all kinds of opinions on whether they could have been legitimately postmarked that night or were backdated. And I don't remember seeing any of that lore written down.
So, do any of you have the rest of the story on January 27, 1967 covers and backdates?
posted 01-15-2017 06:52 AM
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