posted 07-10-2021 08:43 PM               

Space Cover 615: Gemini 3 Recovery Mysteries

This mystery post is brought to you by Jeff Mills (thisismills)! It all started innocently enough – Jeff was able to acquire the bargain priced Gemini 3 USS Intrepid recovery cover sent to Marc Orr – Managing Editor of Hartley Newspapers – from John Auble of the Service Information Office aboard the USS Intrepid that is pictured above.

Upon arrival, Jeff found a surprise inside the cover – a special report Gemini Commemorative Issue of the USS Intrepid newsletter – "The Ketcher" – which had been published within minutes of the actual recovery in the western Atlantic Ocean on March 23, 1965.

The newsletter had lots of articles about the Gemini 3 mission and the USS Intrepid's role in the recovery. One of the articles "WE GOT LETTERS ... Gemini Shot is Heard Round World" was about the thousands of covers sent to the USS Intrepid for the recovery date cachet and cancel. However, the article contains two unsolved mysteries.

Here is the article (click on the article image to see a larger version of it) – read it now to see if you can you find the mysteries in it!

There may be heaps of paperwork on the "drawing board" at Cape Kennedy over the first manned Gemini space shot but INTREPID had its share, too – especially at the Post Office.

The "paperwork" was in the for of envelopes – long ones, colored ones, some with ornate designs, some even perfumed. They flooded the five-man U.S. Post Office aboard ship – all seeking a Gemini shot "cachet" and all to be post-marked the day of the shot.

The cachet is a stamp depicting a Gemini spacecraft and says on it" "FIRST MANNED FLIGHT ... GEMINI GT-3 ... U.S. NAVY RECOVERY FORCE.

Couple this stamp with the fact that the envelopes are scheduled to be post-marked on the day of the Gemini recovery and you've got a real collector's item.

INTREPID's Postal-Clerk-in-Charge, F. W. Strickland, PC1, was "amazed" at how many people knew about the shot and how popular the cachet had become.

He stood knee-deep in correspondence from nearly every state in the Union – including the two newest Hawaii and Alaska. Only two states were not represented – Vermont and Wyoming. There's no explaining why.

But, the word on this two-man test shot didn't confine itself to the 50 states. It seems to be a shot heard 'round the world even before it was fired, since Strickland received 352 letters from 28 foreign countries.

Letters came from Hungary, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Soviet Union, France, England, Spain, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Israel, Belgium, Canada, Poland, Denmark, Romania, Austria, Philippines, West Africa, Greece, Argentina, Red China, Ghana, Australia and Tanzania.

Many of the envelopes showed a good deal of imagination. For example, many were decorated with spacecraft, some with pictures of the late President John F. Kennedy – one from Pittsburgh even had a picture of Virgil (Gus) Grissom who, along with U.S. Astronaut John W. Young, are scheduled to make this manned Gemini journey.

One of the most interesting facets of the whole operation was the selection of stamps used. Many carried the 4-cent Project Mercury stamp, other bore the rocket pioneer Robert H. Goddard commemorative. But, because the majority of letters were from souvenir-hunters, few carried the conventional air mail or 5-cent stamp.

The envelopes were all stuffed with cardboard or stiff paper to allow them to hold up as well as possible for the souvenir-hunter. Most were unsealed to prevent the receiver from ripping the letter open and possibly ruining the cachet.

Besides the "outside" mail received for handling, Stricland also said that every piece of ship's mail (expected to run around 3000 pieces) will be cachets on the date of the shot.

Whether it is for an individual souvenir-hunter or for a stamp dealer, the Gemini cachet certainly seems to be "in" this year – even though the shot will definitely be way out.

Left image caption:
CACHET CATCH – Cachet-seeking letters were received from points all over the world. A sampling here represents, from top to bottom, Hungary, Japan, Argentina, Hawaii, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Soviet Union, France, England and Spain. 352 letters were received from 28 foreign countries.

Right image caption:
STRICKLAND SWAMPED – INTREPID's Postal-Clerk-in-Charge, F. W. Strickland, PC1 surveys mounds of mail received aboard the carrier seeking cachets commemorating the Gemini space shot. Each letter will be post-marked the date of the shot – (Photos by Dick Bond, PH2)

The mysteries are not in the wording of the article but in the photos pictured with the article.

Mystery 1: The newsletter editors seem to have done some sort of sloppy "white out" effect on the cachet images in the photos – why would they take the time to do that?

But more intriguing is Mystery 2: Looking at the uncancelled covers in the two photographs, the covers clearly have the Gemini 2 rubber stamp cachet applied to them instead of the Gemini 3 cachet!

I have never seen a USS Intrepid Gemini 3 recovery cover with a Gemini 2 cachet – and neither has anyone else I have asked. With the large number of the Gemini 2 cacheted envelopes in the photos, you would think that someone would have seen one sometime in the last 50+ years since they were returned to the senders.

Now, we do know that several of the Gemini 3 recovery ships used the Gemini 2 rubber stamp cachet but the USS Intrepid was never identified as one of them.

• Gemini 2 cachet only – USS Ault, USS Bigelow, USS Harwood, USS Kankakee, and USS Robert Owens

• Gemini 2 and Gemini 3 cachets – USS John Paul Jones, USS Mullinnix, and USS Robert Wilson

• Gemini 3 cachet only – USS Intrepid, USS Boston, USS Cony, USS Harold J Ellison, USS Douglas H Fox, and USS Sarsfield

• No Gemini cachet – USS Rich

I was actually able to track down the Postal-Clerk-in-Charge – F.W. Strickland – who is alive and well at 87 years old. When I asked him about it – his response: "Well, you know that was over 50 years ago, all I remember is how sore my hand was from cancelling [cacheting] all those envelopes. There were THOUSANDS of them to do! My hand is still sore from it."

He went on "I do remember there was a box of printed envelopes [Beck cachets]. Those were so easy – put them right in the canceller. Requests came to us [USS Intrepid] from all over the world."

He did confirm that he is the person pictured in the article. I mentioned that I did like that he put covers on his head for the photo!

Strickland said he didn't think to create any cacheted envelopes for himself at the time, so I did send him several of them.

He also said the copy of "The Ketcher" Gemini newsletter brought back some great memories of exciting times while he was on the ship.

So why did the editors "white out" the cachet and what happened to all of the Gemini 2 cacheted covers that were on the USS Intrepid?

Thoughts anyone?

posted 07-11-2021 11:39 AM               

But editors of a ship's newsletter knowing that was a GT-2 cachet instead of a GT-3 and caring about that in a picture didn't seem reasonable.

posted 07-11-2021 05:56 PM               

He also said the picture of him was aboard the USS Intrepid for the article.