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[b]Space Cover #212: Heritage Craft Apollo Space Covers[/b] In our weekly Space Cover of the Week series we've presented many well-known space cover types, such as the popular Swanson SpaceCraft covers; Morris Beck's Prime Recovery Ship covers; Robert Rank's Space Voyage covers; George Goldey's covers; etc., but another lesser-known type, issued only for Apollo 7 through Apollo 17, deserves notice. Dave Ouelette worked for the Bendix Corp. at KSC during the Apollo Program and created the well-done Heritage Craft space covers. His cover production only included the eleven Apollo manned missions, but during that four-year period, provided collectors with some very impressive covers. His Heritage Craft cacheted covers typically have three small portraits of the crew members at the top and the mission emblem cachet below. He also issued covers with the usual 3-portraits, but below that a space scene relating to the flight. Donald E. Wilkes, also a Bendix employee, is said to be the artist who designed the Heritage Craft cachets for Mr. Ouelette, along with the cachets for the Bendix covers and the Dow-Unicovers. Surprisingly, for Apollo 11 only, Ouelette didn't do his standard covers, but instead did covers with black and white cachets picturing Wernher von Braun, along with a quote from him. Also for Apollo 11, he and Bendix were involved in producing blue and red cacheted covers picturing John Kennedy with a quote from him. These JFK covers have no reference to Heritage Craft and should be considered Bendix covers. The covers at the top show an Apollo 7 Heritage cover, with the usual 3-heads and a space scene relating to Apollo 7, and below is a typical Heritage Craft 3-head and mission emblem cacheted cover for Apollo 13. Other Apollo 13 Heritage Craft covers had a small portrait of Jack Swigert added to the right of the cachet. [IMG]http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2323/13132186/23370140/406447285.jpg[/IMG] The top cover is an Apollo 14 Heritage Craft cover, with an official NASA/KSC rubber stamnp cachet added, and pictures Alan Shepard and pays tribute to Freedom 7 and Apollo 14. The bottom cover is a typical 3-head and space scene (with Lunar Rover) Heritage Craft cover for Apollo 15. [IMG]http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2323/13132186/23370140/406447297.jpg[/IMG] These final two Heritage Craft covers are an Apollo 17 3-head/mission emblem cover at top, and below, a cover also for Apollo 17, with a B&W cachet picturing Wernher von Braun that was originally issued for Apollo 11. Many consider Heritage Craft covers among the best Apollo covers. A complete collection would be impressive and many of these covers can be found at Joe Frasketi's website [URL=http://www.spacecovers.com]here[/URL].
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