Apollo 11 (AS-506) - 24 July 1969

Notes General:
i ) Fleet Tug USS Salinan was a secondary recovery ship in case of a launch abort on the 16th.
ii ) After Apollo 11, NASA released the Redstone, Mercury and Hunstville, keeping only the Vanguard for the remaining six Apollo flights. Even then, the Vanguard was not a Primary tracking station, but a secondary one.
iii ) The most common cover for this ship has a Honolulu postmark. However, a small number of covers with a USS Arlington postmark exist and are most desireable.
iv ) So far only 9 copies have been found out of the many dozen USS Goldsborough covers examined
v ) From the collection of David Ball - David comments 'With a quarter million pieces of mail to postmark the envelope must have received the machine cancel first (one of 240,000). Since it was faced wrong (upside down) with no automated method of realizing it (tagged stamp or electric eye) it was postmarked but not cancelled. When they realized the error they went back with the HC (one of 10,000) to finish the job.'
vi ) Only one cover is know and it has an extremely poor postmark. However the date is quite clear and there are enough letters visible to identify it as the USS Hassayampa.
vii ) 'Continuing her service in the Western Pacific, Hassayampa served as replenishment vessel during the Apollo 11 recovery mission where she was on hand for replenishment duties for USS Hornet (CVS-12) and support vessels USS Arlington (AGMR-2), USS Goldsborough (DDG-20), USS New (DD-818), USS Ozark (MCS-2) and USS Salinan (ATF-161). On 22 July 1969, the USS Hassayampa refueled the USS Hornet (CVS-12) just prior to Hornet's recovery of the Apollo 11 space capsule. Hornet's deck log shows this occurring on July 22, 1969, about 36 hours before Hornet picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts.' (http://www.angelwind.com/hassayampa/history.html). Note also the note at the bottom of a letter from the USS Hornet's Commanding Officer to Admiral Combs that the Hassayampa had provided outstanding support.
viii ) Applies to the USS New and the USS Ozark. It appears that Version 2 of the cachet is much harder to find than Version 1.
ix) Only two other covers have been reported by Lee Kok How who first pointed out the variety and Steve Durst. Two others have been reported by Gerard Zonneveld (see this one and this one).
x) Letter from Admiral Moore regarding selection of the USS Hornet as the PRS. Return letter from Dr George Mueller.
xi) Clancy Hatleberg was the “decon” swimmer who open the hatch and pulled the astronauts into the raft for decontamination. John Wolfram was the first swimmer into the water (from the helo) and attached the sea anchor to slow down the spacecraft drift rate. Mike Mallory and Wes Chesser were the other two that entered the water to attach the flotation collar and the rafts. See A11 Recovery Teams for full list of the recovery personel. Information thanks to Bob Fish of the USS Hornet Museum.
xii) You can tell the difference between the two helo pictures by the number of “Apollo” insignias on the front side of the helo – 3 is for A11 (helo #66 having done A8, A10 and A11) while 4 is for A12.

Notes Other:
1) From the collection of Tom Steiner
2) Sold on eBay in 2010 a) 2011 b) 2013 c) 2015 d) 2019 e) 2018 f) 2021 g) 2022 h) 2024
3) From the collection of Woody Witt
4) From the collection of Martin Schwebs Rasmussen
5) From the collection of David Ball
6) From the collection of Lee Kok How
7) From the collection of Gerard Zonneveld
8) From the collection of Andre Gutmann
9) From the collection of Timothy Preston
10) From the collection of Anthony O'Brien

Articles:
a)  A Study of USS New Covers

 

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