posted 04-22-2024 09:10 AM               

Space Cover 750: Bumper 8: The Launch That Started It All

We constantly hear news from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Rocket launches tend to get the biggest headlines and the most coverage for good reason... launches are cool! Very rarely does any of the news from the CCSFS concern the ground. However, there is currently an archaeological dig being conducted at the site of the very first rocket launch from the Cape and it is yielding results of great historical importance. For this reason I have chosen to highlight some Bumper 8 covers.

Bumper 8 was the first rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. It was a captured German V-2 rocket with a WAC Corporal second stage. Many V-2 launches were conducted at White Sands Missile Range during the late 40's. The problem was that the range is 300 miles long but only 50 miles wide. As the captured V-2 program proceeded, higher and higher altitudes were achieved. This meant that as the rockets were launched almost straight up, Earth rotated under its flight path. The rockets started coming down outside the range. The Army needed a different launch site to help prevent this.

Contrary to popular belief, the Army built a sophisticated facility at Cape Canaveral and designated it Launch Pad 3. It had been thought that the pad was simply a concrete slab but it was much more than that. It had an underground and a complex deluge system. There was a tarpaper shack not too far from the pad that was the blockhouse and launch control center.

For many years the concrete slab that the blockhouse sat on was lost. The Florida vegetation quickly consumed the concrete. It was found and cleared for the 50th Anniversary of the Bumper 8 launch. It was found again recently by some archeology students from the University of Central Florida and some fantastic artifacts have been found. Be sure to look into articles written about the Pad 3 blockhouse.

As a docent for the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum I have been to Pad 3 many times. Not much to see but still really cool to stand in the footsteps of history.

Bumper 8 launch covers do not exist. How cool would that be! But luckily for such an historic launch a good number of anniversary covers do exist. The first cover pictured is a Bob Whitney cover for the 30th anniversary of the Bumper 8 launch. The second cover is for the 35th anniversary of the launch that was produced by the Missile Stamp Club. The third cover is for the 50th anniversary of the launch. It has a beautiful printed cachet and has multiple cancels. It has cancels from Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center on the front and Cocoa Beach and Patrick Air Force Base on the back.

What other Bumper 8 covers do you have?

posted 04-22-2024 05:49 PM               

Once again, as posted, it was good to see the relocation of first Cape launch pad #3's actual concrete slab base come to life again, however, this time with more artifacts being unearthed by the recent archaeological team dig.

As with Eddie, since the 1980's, I have tried to search for the exact area myself on several attempts, but to no avail, as the square concrete slab base was overgrown by invasive grass and weeds in which stood a small wooden shack used as a launch control firing room or blockhouse. The 20 by 20-foot plywood building had accommodated Bumper's firing crew and support team comprising of U.S. Army, General Electric Company, and other contractor assigned personnel.

Here are a few other Bumper launch day covers, starting with the 15th anniversary. The multi-cancelled cover at bottom of Eddie's initial post here was one of my own thin gold-foiled border printed cachets for the golden anniversary of that historic first rocket reaching the Cape skies in 1950.

Many of the 50th anniversary covers had been signed by four (4) of the surviving Bumper 8/7 launch team members, but of special note, 25 of the same-type cachet covers were actually placed inside the nosecone of a flight-built Bumper 8 replica model rocket that flew from Pad 3 in celebration of that first rocket flight from what is now the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Also atop the 7-foot-high model rocket was a photo-signed by rocket pioneer Dr. Wernher von Braun along with a actual flown V-2 rocket fragment from White Sands Missile Range in 1946. Both were a part of the official model flown rocket mail payload.

A reporter from the Orlando Evening Star was there on July 24, 1950, and saw it in this way, "The 14-ton rocket thundered into the air today ... When Bumper 8 disappeared into a layer of cirrus clouds in the Florida skies, leaving a vapor trail behind, every person attached to the rocket proving ground breathed a sigh of relief. "There she goes" and "Ain't she pretty" were the bywords as silence settled over the clearing of Florida ground cut into the Florida jungle."