posted 03-07-2023 09:57 PM               

Space Cover 691: TKM-Volna - ICBM flown covers

Project "TKM-Volna" carried out in May to June 1995 jointly by Russian and German scientists on board nuclear submarine K-44 Ryazan (Рязань). On June 7, 1995 02:00 a ballistic missile RSM-50 (SS-N-18) converted under the "TKM-Volna" project to carry a capsule with scientific equipment and postage items (1310 envelopes with the symbols of the Elrabeck experiment) has been launched from the Barents Sea to the Bering Sea missile range "Boevoe Pole" (Боевое Поле - Combat Field) near Kamchatka. The missile covered a distance of 7000 km in 20 minutes flying upon the sub-orbital trajectory. K-44 Ryazan has been logged in the Guinness book of records as the fastest mail carrier in the world.

This was the first of the two known and officially confirmed Russian ballistic missile launches.

During the preparation of the project it was agreed to organize an experimental rocket mail and in February 1995 a special agreement between ITC "Marka" and "Cosmos" JSC "Composite" has been signed. On May 29, 1995 a correspondence acceptance point has been established in Severomorsk. All the accepted mail has been registered and respectively postmarked. In total there were 1140 ITC Marka prepared covers and 130 privately mailed letters.

While delivered to Kamchatka, all the mail has been transferred to the post office Petropavlovsk-50 and cancelled by a special postmark with the date - 09.06.1995. In July ITC Marka issued a certificate of authenticity in the Russian and English languages, confirming the authenticity of each mail item including private letters. There are covers that bear the postmark with other dates – those are not official and were not launched. Russian philatelic society used the postmarks for souvenir cancellations.

But this is not the whole story. Sergey Chizhov created 115 covers to be sent as private letters (100 for German dealer Carsten Fuchs and 15 for his friends in Russia). Unfortunately Artur Chilingarov who was responsible for the whole project from Russian side did not cooperate stating there was no spare payload capacity left. Nevertheless people close to Sergey Chizhov managed to sneak 40 (30 Fuchs and 10 personal) covers passing them through regular post so those ones bear a Severomorsk-9 registered stamp and not an "Experimental rocket post" as the official ones. All other postmarks are the same. Of cause no ITC Marka certificates were issued for those covers. So there were 170 private letters and not 130. The fact is also supported by an article published in Cosmonautics News magazine (1995).

posted 03-08-2023 01:31 PM               

Be carefully because many times sellers cannot differentiate between flown and not flown.

posted 03-09-2023 11:41 AM               

Here is one of the flown private letters.