posted 05-02-2020 02:10 PM               

The Space Shuttle Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) site at the Yundum Airport in the Republic of the Gambia, West Africa, was the location site of the unusual shuttle covers. They had been flown from Florida to West Africa about a week before the scheduled launch of Atlantis by a highly-skilled trained crewman of the astronaut fire, crash, and rescue team from NASA's Kennedy Space Center Fire Department (KSCFD), their home base in Florida, about 4,000+ miles away.

Veteran astronaut rescue crew chief, Ken "Bucky" Buchanan, an original astronaut rescue team leader during the Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs, agreed to fly/carry the covers. They had been with his gear on the team's transatlantic flight from Florida, with a stopover in France, and landing at the Bunjul-Yundum Airport on the African west coast. Less than 25 covers were with him for the on-standby-site for a possible emergency Atlantis abort landing if called up. It was about a full day of air travel.

NASA chose Bunjul, at the country's Yundum air base, for one of the first shuttle contingency landing sites because it was directly under the shuttle's southerly trajectory after a Florida launch. At the time, it was the space agency's first choice of opportunity in meeting certain requirements for an overseas emergency landing.

After Atlantis and her seven-astronaut crew mates were safely in orbit and with the shutdown of the TAL site operations no longer needed to support the launch, Bucky set out on a 15- minute drive on a badly-needed repair paved road to a very small post office in Serekunda, the closest post office near the air base, with our covers in tow.

Once there, with the covers already stamped-up earlier, he handed the only postal clerk on site and tried to explain to him his postal mission there. After a lot of discussion and explanation, complicated by a language barrier, the clerk took his hand stamp device and roughly cancelled each cover. What the postal clerk could not understand, though, was Bucky's request to return or get the covers back over the counter and not have them mailed out. It appears that Bucky was Serekunda's first-ever hand-back cancel service request, finally of which, the postal official — still looking confused —  handed all the covers back to Bucky. Alas, mission accomplished, but it wasn't easy, as Ken said when he got back to Florida.

Benjul (Yundum) Airport in The Gambia was the primary TAL site for low-inclination 28.5 degree shuttle launches because of its in-plane near-equator location. It was activated in July 1988, replacing a TAL site at Dakar, Senegal, that NASA concluded was unsatisfactory due to runway deficiencies and geographic hazards. The Yundum airport facility at Bunjul served as a space shuttle contingency landing site from 1988 before being closed in Nov. 2002. During the last 9 years of the shuttle program, NASA had decided not to use the Yundum facility as a TAL site because the agency wanted to launch the shuttles up to 51.6 degrees to the International Space Station, making air bases in Spain and France more suitable for an emergency landing.

A TAL return flight was one scenario of several abort programs of an unscheduled orbiter landing. The shuttle would have to make an emergency landing if one or more of its three main engines failed during ascent into orbit or with a failure of a major orbiter system. For instance, a failure with a cooling system or cabin pressurization would further halt continuation of a mission. A TAL-site would be called up between roughly T+2:30 minutes (liftoff plus 2 minutes, 30 seconds) and T+7:30 minutes. Main engine cutoff would occur about T+8:30 minutes into flight, with the exact time depending on an orbiter's payload and mission profile.

NASA had enhanced each of the TAL sites with space shuttle-unique landing aids and equipment to support an orbiter landing and turnaround operation while in another country. The TAL sites were covered by a separate international agreement that permitted a staff of NASA, contractor and military personnel for supporting a shuttle launch and contingency landing, which included the six-member KSCFD-fire, crash and rescue team. Their signatures can be seen on one of the depicted carried covers; Steve "Rescue Randy" Dudgeon, Robert Reed, Captain Glen "Nit" Witt, Konrad Pace, Driver Thomas Clary, and of course, cover carrier Kenneth W. Buchanan. Altogether, a combined TAL team at a given site could be dozens of support specialists, including personnel from the host country as well.

The TAL site at Africa's airport facility included navigational and landing aids, weather equipment, dedicated ground support equipment, emergency gear, and aircraft support using the C-130 for search and rescue, medical evacuation, and logistics. For aircraft weather support, either a Learjet C-21 or Beachcraft turboprop C-12 were on standby if needed.

While I am not necessarily an abort landing site cover collector, there had been regular covers issued (unflown) at The Gambia for other shuttle support missions, but not that often it would seem from Africa. Other TAL site commemorative covers seem more common or popular from Spain, nearby its Moron Air Base, and the Zaragoza Air Base in Spain. In south France, there was the Istres Air Base just outside the town of Istres and the Ben Guerir Air Base in Morocco that had been used for low-inclination shuttle launches as a weather alternate TAL site because of its geographic location and its landing support facilities. Ben Guerir had replaced Casablanca, Morocco, which was used as a contingency landing site in January 1986 when the shuttle Challenger and 51L crew were lost.

Throughout the entire shuttle program, though, with 135 launched shuttles from 1981-2011, a TAL site had never been called up for an actual abort shuttle landing.