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[b]Space Cover 599: USS Furse GT-4.[/b] Gemini-Titan 4 mission was a historic mission, not only for US citizens but for all mankind and especially for space lovers. In this second manned Gemini mission, astronaut Ed White “walked” in space on June 3, 1965. It was the first US astronauts performing an EVA just some months later than Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who became first human to walk in outer space on March 18, 1965 in the Voskhod-2 mission. Gemini-Titan 4 returned to Earth on June 7, 1965 and astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White were recovered by USS Wasp in North Atlantic Ocean. Prime Recovery Ship covers from USS Wasp are well known by astrophilatelists: Captain covers, Unnumbered Beck covers, Beck covers and RSC covers from USS Wasp can be widely found in philatelic market. Furthermore, Secondary Recovery Ship covers of other assigned ships to GT-4 space mission also can be easily found, both from the ships of the Atlantic fleet and from the Pacific fleet. For more than 55 years different space covers came to the market and were widely studied and catalogued. Above cover is an unnumbered Beck printed cachet cover for USS Furse, secondary recovery ship from Atlantic fleet, postmarked on June 3, 1965, launch date for GT-4 mission. As everybody knows Beck covers were created by dealer Morris Beck, who sent [i]only 25 unnumbered covers[/i] to each Captain’s ship to use as he saw fit. Just because of its reduced quantity the unnumbered Beck covers are specially sought after astrophilatelists. But, just because the low quantity? No, this cover is really different. As a consideration, above a numbered Beck cover USS Furse postmarked on June 3, 1965. B542 is the correct number for USS Furse ship and there are 418 copies. And then, why is different?. We can pay attention to the postmark. Both are dated A.M./3/JUN/1965 but the ship name, even in same position, appears in different way. Meanwhile in unnumbered cover USS Furse is written USS without dots, in numbered covers, U.S.S. Furse is written with dots. As the unnumbered USS Furse cover is the first I have ever seen, I cannot know if all unnumbered USS Furse covers were postmarked with same USS without dots. In addition, USS Furse letters font look different. Any additional unnumbered USS Furse for GT-4 mission maybe can help to know if this was just an error, or all unnumbered covers shows USS without dots, or maybe the USS Furse without dots is a counterfeit postmark.
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