posted May 06, 2012 06:38 PM               

Space Cover #160: MA-7 USS Pierce

The 50th anniversary of Mercury-Atlas 7 (aka - Aurora 7) with Scott Carpenter onboard, is right around the corner! So let's take a look at a cover from that flight. Most of you know that Aurora 7 landed 402 km downrange from the planned splashdown point, and took quite a while to recover. Carpenter was picked up by helicopters from the planned prime recovery ship, the USS Intrepid. The closest ship to the splashdown was the destroyer USS Farragut, however, it did not have the proper boat and aircraft crane to hoist Aurora 7 out of the water. About 6 hours after the landing, the destroyer USS John R Pierce successfully recovered Aurora 7. Since the Pierce was planned to be a secondary recovery ship, few covers were postmarked onboard the Pierce for the capsule recovery. Couple that with the demand for covers postmarked onboard a ship that actually recovered a capsule, and one finds that USS Pierce covers for the recovery are scarce. My current USS John R. Pierce cover is shown above.

How many covers were actually postmarked onboard the Pierce? Nobody seems to know for sure, and I've even heard speculation that there could not have been more than ten. This is the third Pierce that I have owned (the previous two can be seen here and here). Since I've had three different ones in my collecting life, I'd tend to think that there must be more than ten Pierces out there.

So, let's do a census! Who else has a Pierce (or more)? Please respond if you do, and even post images if you can. And if yours is one of my previous two Pierces (I don't remember who those went to), please note that as well, so we don't double account those. This obviously won't be a complete census, but could give us an order-of-magnitude estimate. Thanks gang!

posted May 06, 2012 08:56 PM               

I do also have a USS Farragut cover. No cachet at all.

posted May 07, 2012 08:42 AM               

So far that makes at least 8 and possibly 9 so the so called 10 is definitely short of the mark.

So far Eddie's USS Farragut is the only one that I've seen. Does anyone else have one.

posted May 12, 2012 08:01 AM               

Reverse of the Plain Jane cover pictured above has a centered ship's black rubber stamped cachet. The same black ship's cachet is applied to the Goldey cover that follows.

A George Goldey cachet cover for USS John R. Pierce, signed by astronaut Scott Carpenter, is shown on his mission recovery date, May 24, 1962. The ship's rubber stamped black cachet pictured above is also on the reverse of this cover. Note, USS John R. Pierce did not recover Carpenter but did recovery his spacecraft, Aurora 7, thus becoming the Primary Recovery Ship for his MA-7 flight. USS Intrepid's recovery helo recovered Carpenter on the recovery.

posted May 12, 2012 04:55 PM               

Looks like we have two Goldey cachets (do you guys really think that Goldey just sent two to the Pierce, or more?).

Seven are no-cachet (with varying resolution of the ship's rubber stamped cachet on the reverse).

One has the Ship's Cachet applied to the front of the cover (obverse side) as opposed to the reverse.

One has a typed cachet (the one I highlighted in the article above).

posted June 15, 2012 08:31 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by NAAmodel#240:
I have ... a Farragut.

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