[Apollo 14]

LUNAR SURFACE FLOWN MISSION PATCH DESIGNED AND PLACED BY THE APOLLO 14 BACKUP CREW IN THE LUNAR MODULE ANTARES

Stafford’s letter printed on his USAF Flag Rank stationery reads in full: “This BEEP BEEP patch was carried on the flight of Apollo 14 during January 31 to February 9, 1971 and was one of the ‘gotcha’ patches in Lunar Module Antares.  It stayed some 33 hours on the Moon inside Antares during February 5 and 6. It was given to me by Apollo 14 Commander Alan Shepard after the flight.  Full details of this unusual patch are provided in my SBH letterhead background summary.”

Lt. General Stafford’s Stafford, Burke and Hecker (SBH) letter reads, in part: “This patch was personalized by the Apollo 14 back-up crew of Gene Cernan, Ron Evans and Joe Engle.  They are the only Apollo back-up crew to have their own mission patch. The design stems from the fact of Alan Shepard returned to active space flight status after years being grounded since 1963 due to Meniere’s disease, an inner-ear ailment.  Shepard had this condition surgically corrected in 1968 and was selected to command Apollo 14. He was the oldest astronaut to fly any Apollo mission.

In Gene’s 1999 book, ‘The Last Man on the Moon,’ he describes the good-natured ribbing by his back-up crew to Shepard’s crew: ‘Ron, Joe and I called ourselves the First Team, to infer that we were better than they were.  I was always giving Al mock warnings not to mess up, because the First Team was standing right there, ready to strap in and fly that Saturn V if the old man (and his crew) couldn’t hack it.’

This patch ‘was a gotcha on Al, for it depicted a gray-bearded Wile E. Coyote (Shepard’s crew) coming up from the Earth only to find a “First Team” Roadrunner already standing on the Moon, chirping his famous “Beep-Beep! Every time we would give him a “Beep-Beep” jab, Shepard would shoot right back, “Beep, beep, your ass!”

“All the way to the Moon and back, even on the lunar surface, whenever the crew opened a box, bag or locker, out would float a First Team mission patch.  Ron, Joe and I, as the backup crew, had final access to the spacecraft, and while we set switches and checked the gauges, we also stuffed our Roadrunner patches into every nook and cranny, setting up a future mini-blizzard of gotchas… On the private radio loop during the flight of Apollo 14 was Shepard’s annoyance when still another patch would suddenly appear.  “Tell Cernan,” he growled, “Beep-Beep, his ass.”’

This patch was given to me after the Apollo 14 flight by Alan Shepard as a thank-you for my work while I was Chief of the Astronaut Office, Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston, Texas in 1971.  It is one of the lunar surface patches that continued to annoy Al while he and Edgar Mitchell explored the lunar surface during February 5 and 6, 1971.  It spent some 33 hours on lunar surface during the Apollo 14 flight which began on January 31 and returned to earth on February 9, 1971.

THOMAS P. STAFFORD, LT. GENERAL, USAF (Ret.), Gemini 6 Pilot (1965) and Gemini 9 Commander (1966), Apollo 10 Commander (1969) Apollo Commander, Apollo Soyuz (1975)”

Apollo 14 “First Team” patches are rare and seldom seen on the market.