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Author Topic:   STS-69 'Dog Crew II' crew patch covers
Ken Havekotte
Member

Posts: 3081
From: Merritt Island, Florida, Brevard
Registered: Mar 2001

posted 09-07-2020 08:45 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Ken Havekotte   Click Here to Email Ken Havekotte     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
It was 25 years ago today that the Space Shuttle Dog Crew II of mission STS-69 was launched into orbit on Sept. 7, 1995. It was the 71st shuttle mission, the ninth flight of OV-105 Endeavour, and the 25th landing of a shuttle orbiter at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 18th.

In the summer of 1995 the idea of possibly creating a special unofficial crew patch was tossed around between veteran aerospace reporter Beth Dickey, now with NASA in Washington, D.C., and myself, a long-time aerospace enthusiast and promoter who heads up the SpaceCoast Cover Service (SCCS) of Merritt Island, FL, as a space archivist, collector and specialist

The STS-69 crew, of which Beth had personal contact with, liked the idea of creating a special dog-themed patch design. After all, the crew had been known as the Dog Crew II. As an SCCS news release noted in 1995:

A good-natured bulldog makes its home in the aft compartment of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which is poised to orbit the Dog Crew II on Mission STS-69...

The five astronauts of Dog Crew II trace their pedigree to the "Dogs of War," a tight pack of flight controllers, astronaut trainers, and astronauts who carried out STS-53/Discovery in Dec. 1992, the last of the Defense Department's classified shuttle missions. Each team member adopted a dogtag, or nickname...

Navy Captain David Walker, known throughout his years of military service as Red Dog, commanded STS-53. When the veteran shuttle astronaut was chosen as top dog for STS-69, the red-headed native of Eustis, FL, dug up the bone of camaraderie again. "It's a morale-builder, he barks...

Joining Red Dog on Endeavour's ninth flight into space are: Dogface (Army Colonel James Voss, payload commander, from Opelilia, AL, as well as the original litter), Cujo (Shuttle Pilot Kenneth Cockrell, a mild-mannered native of Austin, TX), Pluto (James Newman, Ph.D., mission specialist-2, a physicist and computer whiz from San Diego, CA), and Underdog, the spaceflight rookie and mission specialist-3 (Michael Gernhardt, Ph.D., a bioengineer from Mansfield, OH)...

A fellow Dog of War, Dog Gone (astronaut Guion Bluford) bestowed Voss' dogtag as a tribute to the Dogface Soldiers, the Army Infantrymen of World War II. Cockrell takes his Cujo dogtag from the Stephen King novel of the same name. Newman is tagged Pluto because of his interest in science and what his crew mates describe as a "unique perspective on life." Underdog was a natural tag for Gernhardt, the pup, who turned tail on a career as a professional deep-sea diver to become an astronaut...

They're the Dog Crew II, and they roam the planet in the Dogmobile, arguably the hottest jalopy in Houston. As conveyance for the crew of a classified Defense Department mission, "Endogvour" had a coat of flat- black paint. Now the 1979 Pontiac station wagon is a peaceful T-38 trainer white jet, trimmed in blue and dotted with paw prints. It sports a variety of surplus flight hardware.

(Photos courtesy of Paige Walker)

About six weeks before their shuttle flight, Red Dog (Walker) phoned me to ask if I would be interested in possibly buying the actual Dogmobile for my own personal space collection. For a moment, I was thinking wouldn't it be great to drive the Dogmobile from Houston to the Cape right in time for the STS-69 launch and perhaps showcase the old '79 Endogvour on the space center and surrounding Florida Space Coast area as a mission promotion of sorts. Unfortunately, though, it was not to be, and to this day I do not know what had become of the astronaut-used Dogmobile.

With the idea of creating a Dog Crew II patch, SCCS contacted about half a dozen artists and graphic designers from around the country. After reviewing all of the submitted artwork designs, a final patch emblem design was chosen by the crew. The winner was Joel Katzowitz of Marietta, Georgia, a professional graphic designer and an accomplished U.S. Postal Service space philatelic cancel artist.

From June to August 1995, the crew, represented by Walker, kept in contact with my firm for changes to certain design elements (along with a few of my own suggestions), deciding on what color threads to use and finalizing the patch construction details. Overall, though, most all of the key design elements were kept from the original proposed patch.

While the Dog Crew II got a lot of publicity of their special yellow-gold trimmed cloth patches, little was ever known about another Dog Crew II related project. In addition to the patches, a couple hundred special and limited cachet commemorative covers were printed for the Dog Crew, but without their knowledge (Red Dog did know of them about a week before their launch).

The two-color cachet covers were printed by Brevard Printing in Cocoa, Florida. It was the same company that had printed all of the Bishop Apollo crew insurance covers along with the lightweight envelopes that went to the moon's surface by the Apollo 15 crew.

The cachet covers featured a similar likeness of the chosen artwork by Katzowitz along with a rubber stamp impression of paw prints along the cover front-surface borders. Sixty nine (69) of the 200 covers were imprinted with a serial number of 1 to 69 below the patch emblem cachet, representing STS-69. Another 31 of the special covers were proof issues with only "No. __ of 69," but with no numbers indicated.

The remainder of the envelope covers, just over 100, contained no numbering information below the patch cachet and were mostly posted for the launch day, a few for Endeavour's landing at KSC, some combo launch and landing cancels together, while a few others were kept in mint condition with no postal markings or cancels.

To surprise the Dog Crew II after their return from space on Sept. 18, and at the request of Walker (the "surprise" was only known to the flight commander), all of the numbered 69 Dog Crew II cachet covers were at astronaut crew quarters at Kennedy that same morning after the STS-69 crew landed Endeavour on Runway 33 on orbit number 171.

The Dog Crew spaceflight marked the first time two different payloads were retrieved and deployed during the same mission. An extravehicular activity (spacewalk) by Jim "Dogface" Voss and Mike "Underdog" Gernhardt took hour-long turns flying almost 200 miles above the Earth in refashioned spacesuits used for the first time in space. The spacewalking duo also tested new tools for future International Space Station (ISS) construction. The nearly 11-day space voyage was said to be a "great success" by NASA shuttle program officials.

Of the 69 covers, a few had been returned back to me signed by the entire Dog Crew II with their dog names added (see first display panel at top). Of those signed by Walker's crew, two different appropriate postage stamps had been used for several of them. One was a 32-cent first class stamp POW & MIA Never Forgotten "dog tag" stamp image, while another was the newly released $10.75 Express Mail stamp first released in June 1995. It depicts a shuttle Endeavour liftoff (STS-57) from two years earlier.

Upon their KSC arrival three days before their first launch attempt into space, the STS-69 crew members were presented with their own personal-use Dog Crew II visor caps. An official NASA photograph (KSC-95PC-1244), as seen above, depicts the five crewmen displaying for the press, with their Dog Crew black baseball caps on, their unofficial Dog Crew patch attached over their right arm shoulder of their royal blue flying suits. The same suits are used by the astronauts while in training and when flying the T-38 supersonic jets. It's a first in shuttle program patch history that an actual flight crew wore such a patch of this type on their NASA training and flying suits.

STS-69 wasn't the last time a Dog Crew flew together as a shuttle team. Dog Crew III became the first shuttle flight dedicated to the assembly of the ISS in 1998. The six-member crew of STS-88, another shuttle Endeavour mission, had two prior Dog Crew astronauts, Bob Cabana and Jim Newman. As with STS-69's Dog Crew II, an unofficial second patch was designed by Katzowitz along with a special limited cachet cover by SCCS.

Joel Katzowitz
Member

Posts: 815
From: Marietta GA USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 09-08-2020 07:15 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Joel Katzowitz   Click Here to Email Joel Katzowitz     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Wow... 25 years ago?

What great memories of a fun design project Ken, and to think we're still working together on projects today!

I actually learned a few new things about the DCII project by reading your post. I can hardly wait three more years to read some new stories about our DCIII project!

Bob M
Member

Posts: 1772
From: Atlanta-area, GA USA
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 09-09-2020 06:24 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Bob M   Click Here to Email Bob M     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Woof, Woof! Gosh, guys, Ken and Joel, what a wonderful job you both did with the Dog Crew's patch, covers and cachet design. And a very informative and interesting account of the whole Dog Crew patch/cover story.

Interesting selection of a "dog name" by each crew member, but I probably wouldn't have chosen "Dogface" for myself that Voss did. Also the use of a USPS Dogtag stamp for some covers was brilliant.

Great job guys and, Ken, keep up these very special and appreciated space cover presentations.

Tallpaul
Member

Posts: 186
From: Rocky Point, NY, USA
Registered: Feb 2012

posted 09-11-2020 07:16 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Tallpaul   Click Here to Email Tallpaul     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Thanks Ken.

It's always fun and enlightening to read your histories.

garymilgrom
Member

Posts: 1973
From: Atlanta, GA
Registered: Feb 2007

posted 09-11-2020 03:44 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for garymilgrom   Click Here to Email garymilgrom     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well done Ken and Joel. Kudos!

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