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[b]Space Cover #186: Wally![/b] In my last Space Cover of the Week in early October, I was on a streak to write up Edwards rocketplane cachets (that week was the HL-10), and I overlooked the fact that that week was the 50th anniversary of Wally Schirra's "Textbook" Mercury flight - Sigma 7 on October 3, 1962. So let's do a belated celebration of Wally's 50th! The cover above is the "Captain's Cover" for Wally's Sigma 7 prime recovery ship, the USS Kearsarge. While many other prime recovery ships produced specific cover designs for their Captain's Covers, the Captain of the Kearsarge, E. P. Rankin just used his corner card (printed return address in the upper left) stationery. Since this was considered official Navy mail, no postage or postmark was required (see the typed "Postage and Fees Paid Navy Department" in the upper right). The cover did receive the Beck-designed Navy red rubber stamped cachet for the recovery on its lower left. It was addressed to a foreign official in the U. S. State Department. I had Wally autograph it at the New Jersey autograph show in 2005. Captain Rankin had a special filler card put inside the cover. The printed front of the filler card is shown above. And the typed body of the filler card is shown above here. Who else has some neat Wally/Sigma 7 covers? Let's post 'em! Just Wally's Mercury flight - let's save his Gemini 6 and Apollo 7 covers for future SCOTW's. And if you need someone to host your Wally cover image for posting, please send it to me in an email. Glad to do it! Happy belated 50th Wally, wherever you are now... :)
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