This site is maintained as a hobby by Dr Ross J. Smith and was started in November 2008. It aims to list all know Recovery, Tracking and Communication ship covers for the US Manned Space Program from Project Mercury to ASTP plus the recovery effort for STS-51L and show scans of many of them. In particular it lists many different cachets for each mission as well as documenting variations on postmarks, especially for the Primary Recovery ships. It also eventually will contain articles on many areas related to the recovery effort.
Notes:
1) Dates are in day/month/year format
2) The names maroon & magenta are often used to describe the same colour
3) colour1-colour2 indicates a multicolour cachet : colour1, colour2 indicates the cachet can either colour1 or
colour2
4) Beck Cachets - Numbers are listed only where significant numbers were postmarked by the appropriate ship - a
full list of all know Beck cachets can be found at http://beck.ormurray.com/
Abbreviations:
DNP - Did Not Particpate
Oth - Other Involvement
PRS - Primary Recovery Ship
SRS - Secondary Recovery Ship
TS - Tracking Ship
A "T-" in front of a ship designation indicates that the respective ship is operated by the Military
Sealift Command (MSC) and that it is manned by a civilian crew.
Site last changed on 28 July 2010
