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Author
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Topic: Apollo 13 USS Kawishiwi cover with airmen?
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stsmithva
Member Posts: 2119
From: Fairfax, VA
Registered: Feb 2007
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posted 03-24-2025 03:38 PM
   
I am baffled by a cover I picked up in a collection. USS Kawishiwi was an oiler, or tanker ship, and part of the Apollo 13 recovery fleet. So why would a cover postmarked on board during the recovery have the autographs of several air crew members? Here is a paper that was in the envelope, with the names more neatly written.  Someone cared enough to get these autographs and have them write their assignments, but again, what aircraft was associated with an oiler? |
Axman
Member Posts: 728
From: Derbyshire UK
Registered: Mar 2023
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posted 03-25-2025 05:48 AM
There are all sorts of possibilities to explain this, but little to no evidence available to decide amongst them all.I would note the following points: - The signers seem to have used two different pens for the four signatures.
- There was plenty of room to land a helicopter on the oiler.
- One of the secondary purposes the Kawishiwi was put to was transporting mail (usually to and from Vietnam).
- Your cover was sent through the post with a label that was subsequently removed, postmarked aboard the oiler.
Some possible scenarios are: - [Highly Probable].
The cover is just random, a convenient receptacle to receive a set of signatures well after the event. - [Quite Possible]
A helicopter landed on Kawishiwi during the recovery operation and flown signed unpostmarked envelopes were offloaded before the helicopter headed back to base, wherever that was. - [Much less likely]
The Kawishiwi received mail for transportation from the PRS Iwo Jima, and the postmaster aboard cancelled a number of unpostmarked covers... this scenario depends on the destination for the covers being different for the majority of the Iwo Jima mail. But we'll never know as the address label has been removed.
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yeknom-ecaps
Member Posts: 928
From: Northville MI USA
Registered: Aug 2005
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posted 03-25-2025 03:17 PM
Just a random cover related to the mission to get autographs on .... you can find these type of recovery personnel on all kinds of covers ---- seen recently especially on Patrick AFB recovery date for Skylab missions having such signatures.Would guess when the collector ran out of prime recovery ship covers to send so they just started sending out other recovery ship covers. | |
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