posted 01-21-2024 11:02 AM               

Space Cover 737: USS Noa and MA-6 Friendship 7 Recovery

This Goldcraft cover, with regular US postage, is postmarked for the USS Noa's recovery of John Glenn and his Friendship 7 capsule.

Mercury-Atlas 6, with John Glenn aboard his Friendship 7 capsule, accomplished America's first orbital space flight on February 20, 1962.

Friendship 7 splashed down 40 miles from its intended target area near the Prime Recovery Ship USS Randolph. But Friendship 7 landed only six miles from the USS Noa, one of 23 secondary recovery ships. So destroyer Noa had the honor of recovering America's first orbital astronaut and his capsule. Shortly after taking Glenn on board, he was transported by helo to the Randolph.

America had put a man in space around Earth, but the story is far from ending there.

To commemorate this historic space event, the US Post Office had secretly stored large numbers of their new 4 cent Mercury stamp at 305 post offices around the country. Then upon the conclusion of Glenn's flight, ordered the post offices to start selling the stamps to the public. This is a fascinating story in itself, but now back to the Noa and covers on board for the recovery. Collectors surely wanted covers that were on board the Noa and George Goldey, for one, gladly accommodated them.

But the Noa, being only one of 23 secondary recovery ships in the recovery area, wouldn't normally have many covers from dealers or collectors on board, including the other 22 ships.

But Goldey, of Goldcraft Covers, obviously took steps to produce a number of impressive covers from the Noa and three types of his covers are shown here.

Unfortunately, only one Goldcraft type, those with a Mercury stamp and canceled on February 23, the day Noa returned to port, are certain to be legitimate. Significantly, a postal clerk on board the Noa admitted that he backdated a number of covers.

This is a good example of one of Goldcraft's backdated covers with the Mercury stamp.

Donald O. Schultz, in his acclaimed publication from 1967, "Project Mercury... One Step Into Space," stated: "Noa did not have the Mercury stamps on board nor did any of the other recovery ships in the MA-6 force."

Also from another source:

1. Approximately 1500 covers were postmarked legitimately on February 23, when the Noa returned to port.

2. Approximately 300 covers, most with Mercury stamps, but some with other stamps, were backdated.

3. And significantly, all covers with the ship's picture and capsule (Goldcraft) and postmarked February 20, 1962, are backdated.

These are excellent examples of two of the legitimate covers from the recovery of Glenn: a USS Randolph PRS cover, who received Glenn and his capsule from the Noa, and a Goldcraft cover for the Noa's return-to-port with Mercury stamp

All this about the Noa and the release of the famous Mercury stamps is well-known by most space cover collectors and many of us own various types of Noa/MA-6 covers. However, these Noa covers seem to be plentiful, when in actually, they should not be.

So, are there any certain legitimate covers from the USS Noa for the Glenn's MA-6 recovery? For sure, and Ross Smith in his excellent thread from March 9, 2013 explains why, and shown are five examples: "MA-6 USS Noa Covers with PM Time Slug."

posted 01-21-2024 01:09 PM               

I too was interested in who created the NOA artwork, it is fantastic and detailed. I've seen it referenced to Goldey in the past but have a question: have you or any other collectors here seen these NOA cachet covers with Goldey's name or Goldcraft on them?

It made me think, so through further ressearch, I noticed George's cachet making style by 1962 was composed primarily of taking prior artwork for other sources and repurposing for his own covers in somewhat lower quality. Also, the cachet on the NOA covers is in mulitple colors and of a very high quality printing of which doesn't seem typical of what George was producing at this time. This combined with the lack of any Goldey/Goldcraft markings has made me think that the NOA cachet covers shown here may not have been made by Goldey...

What I think could have happened was, George obtained one of these printed NOA covers, liked the cachet, and copied the artwork for his own purposes. He is known to have used it on covers for the remaining Mercury flights (Carpenter, Schirra, and Cooper), I've included a few images of example covers below. To me this feels consistent with how he was making all his covers: leveraging availible artwork from Associated Press (AP) photos, newswires/newspapers, other cachet makers, etc.

posted 01-21-2024 01:41 PM               

If there had been similar covers for USS Randolph I could accept the artwork was pre-prepared and the text amended to the Noa, but I have never seen mention of any such covers, which indicates the artwork is unique to the Noa.

posted 01-21-2024 02:01 PM               

Somewhere I had seen these cachets attributed to a guy named Ray Novack, but can't find that source now.

And mine is addressed to William Numeroff, a cachet artist in his own right, and the artwork looks a lot like something he might have done...

posted 01-22-2024 09:02 AM               

1. The number of covers with a PM time slug is now up to 13 (I have one extra to add to the 12 on my site). These are the only covers which are definitely genuine.

2. At first I also thought that the designer for the so called Goldcraft covers only had 3 days to produce the covers. However I now realise that the covers could have been blank when postmarked and the cachet added at a later date. That would remove any time limit on the cachet.

3. Two FDCs with a Cape Canaveral postmark exist with a nearly identical cachet. The only different (except slightly different colours) is that one has Glenn's head where the capsule is on the so called Goldcraft covers. The other one is marked on the back #1 of 5 made by MhCachets USCS #7913.

posted 01-22-2024 11:01 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ross:
The number of covers with a PM time slug is now up to 13 (I have one extra to add to the 12 on my site)

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posted 01-22-2024 01:07 PM               

After reading the initial post I dug through my covers and found several that I had forgotten about. I found two nice Goldcraft NOA covers, one with an authentic Feb 23 cancel on the Mercury stamp and the other with four Mercury stamps and a backdated Feb 20 cancel accompanied by a John Glenn signature.

posted 01-23-2024 03:25 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ross:
That would remove any time limit on the cachet.

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Does anyone have an image for a NOA Feb 20 cover with the cachet that is addressed? None of the ones I have as examples are addressed.