U.S. Navy cancellation ID

I have a cover, which I mailed to my parents in August, 1965 when I
was in the middle of the Pacific on the U.S.S. Magoffin with my Marine
battalion. The only postal evidence that the cover was posted on the
Magoffin is (possibly) U.S. Navy duplex hand cancellation with the
number "17004" at the bottom. Aside from my personal knowledge of
where I was at that time, the letter also refers to my being on the
Magoffin .

Does anyone have any military postal-history literature that would tie
the cancellation to the Magoffin? Your help will be much appreciated;
I intend to include this cover in a Vietnam War exhibit at Vanpex 2007
(which will be June 8-10 in Richmond, BC, a suburb of Vancouver).

Bob

On Apr 22, 10:02 am, Bobstamp wrote:
I have a cover, which I mailed to my parents in August, 1965 when I
was in the middle of the Pacific on the U.S.S. Magoffin with my Marine
battalion. The only postal evidence that the cover was posted on the
Magoffin is (possibly) U.S. Navy duplex hand cancellation with the
number "17004" at the bottom. Aside from my personal knowledge of
where I was at that time, the letter also refers to my being on the
Magoffin .

Does anyone have any military postal-history literature that would tie
the cancellation to the Magoffin? Your help will be much appreciated;
I intend to include this cover in a Vietnam War exhibit at Vanpex 2007
(which will be June 8-10 in Richmond, BC, a suburb of Vancouver).

Bob

US NAVY Branch 17004 was assigned to the Naval Hospital at Yokosuka,
Japan from 1950 to 1980. I can't guess why your letter wasn't
postmarked aboard the MAGOFFIN, which had its own post office at the
time. The most common reasons why mail isn't postmarked aboard the
ship where it was mailed is (a) no post office aboard, and (b) mail
clerk has too much mail to handle and sends it ashore uncanceled. It
is also possible that, for some reason, mail from the Marine unit
aboard was treated differently from the mail sent by crew members of
the ship, and was taken ashore by the Marine mail orderly when the
ship arrived in Japan, rather than being processed by the ship's post
office. (For the benefit or lurkers, MAGOFFIN was a troop transport
and the Marines would have been "passengers" rather than ship's crew.)
There were several Navy post offices at Yokosuka, each with its own
numeber. I can't guess why the orderly might have chosen to drop the
mail at the hospital, unless it was conveniently close to the pier
where the ship tied up?
Hope this helps.
Dave Kent, Editor
Military Postal History Bulletin

Well, Dave, there's a red face here in Vancouver. It seems that the
cover I was referring to was not the original cover for the letter.
Since the date was just two days after the date on the enclosed
letter, I assumed that they went together. You mentioning of Yokosuka
caused the penny to drop, and in my files I soon found the letter that
should have been in that cover. And I don't have a cover for the
letter written on the Magoffin. Thanks very much for your detective
work, and for proving once again that assumptions have no place in the
study of postal history.

If you are willing, here's another question. I am curious why letters
that I sent from Camp Schwab on Okinawa are postmarked "New York, NY."
I have several of them, and a few of the cancellations include "14030
Unit 4" at the bottom of the CDS portion of the duplex canceller. The
cancellations without the "14030 Unit 4" are otherwise seem identical.
Was "14030 Unit 4" code for Camp Schwab?

Thanks,

Bob

Google was really slow at uploading my reply to Dave, so I contacted
him by e-mail. He sent this reply to my query about "14030 Unit 4":

"Navy Branch number 14030 was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division. It
traveled with them whether they were at Camp Pendleton, Okinawa,
Vietnam, or other places, although it probably wasn't used much when
they were stateside with a convenient base post office to use. Unit 4
is said to have been assigned to the 12th Marines. All this is from
one of our reference books based on Navy postal records now in the
National Archives. The existing records don't have a chronology of
actual locations as the Army records have for APOs. The "New York,
N.Y." in the dial means that for administrative purposes the post
office was a branch of the New York City post office. That means that
the mail clerks drew their supplies from New York and sent their
remittances for the sale of stamps and money orders to New York. It
had nothing to do with the routing of mail. This administrative
relationship began in 1908 when post offices were first established on
ships, and continued through the two world wars on to 1980, when the
DoD established the Military Postal Service Agency in Washington,
which is now the parent of all shipboard and overseas military post
offices."

Dave's answer is interesting, but there's obviously more to the story.
I responded to his e-mail, writing the following:

"I was not in the 3rd Marine Division (although that is open to
question) and I certainly was never with the 12th Marines. I was
assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine
Division when I was graduated from Field Medical Service School. 3/1/1
was at that time stationed at Pendleton.

"There is a curious notation in my service record: it states that on
February 17th I was transferred to the 3rd Marine Division, although
the only change that occurred at about that date was that I was
transferred from H&S Company to Lima Company. That transfer, according
to a Marine Corps historian at Quantico, was administrative only and
had nothing at all to do with my actual circumstance. He assured me
that I was a member of 3/1/1 throughout my time with the Marines.

"To complicate matters further, I have two covers and one 'C-Ration
postcard' that I mailed from Vietnam. The cancellations are similar to
the ones from Okinawa; one is from 'Unit 4,' one from 'Unit 6' and one
from 'Unit 11'".

I don't think that there can be anything more confusing than military
postal history!

Bob

On Apr 26, 1:20 pm, Bobstamp wrote:
Google was really slow at uploading my reply to Dave, so I contacted
him by e-mail. He sent this reply to my query about "14030 Unit 4":

"Navy Branch number 14030 was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division. It
traveled with them whether they were at Camp Pendleton, Okinawa,
Vietnam, or other places, although it probably wasn't used much when
they were stateside with a convenient base post office to use. Unit 4
is said to have been assigned to the 12th Marines. All this is from
one of our reference books based on Navy postal records now in the
National Archives. The existing records don't have a chronology of
actual locations as the Army records have for APOs. The "New York,
N.Y." in the dial means that for administrative purposes the post
office was a branch of the New York City post office. That means that
the mail clerks drew their supplies from New York and sent their
remittances for the sale of stamps and money orders to New York. It
had nothing to do with the routing of mail. This administrative
relationship began in 1908 when post offices were first established on
ships, and continued through the two world wars on to 1980, when the
DoD established the Military Postal Service Agency in Washington,
which is now the parent of all shipboard and overseas military post
offices."

Dave's answer is interesting, but there's obviously more to the story.
I responded to his e-mail, writing the following:

"I was not in the 3rd Marine Division (although that is open to
question) and I certainly was never with the 12th Marines. I was
assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine
Division when I was graduated from Field Medical Service School. 3/1/1
was at that time stationed at Pendleton.

"There is a curious notation in my service record: it states that on
February 17th I was transferred to the 3rd Marine Division, although
the only change that occurred at about that date was that I was
transferred from H&S Company to Lima Company. That transfer, according
to a Marine Corps historian at Quantico, was administrative only and
had nothing at all to do with my actual circumstance. He assured me
that I was a member of 3/1/1 throughout my time with the Marines.

"To complicate matters further, I have two covers and one 'C-Ration
postcard' that I mailed from Vietnam. The cancellations are similar to
the ones from Okinawa; one is from 'Unit 4,' one from 'Unit 6' and one
from 'Unit 11'".

I don't think that there can be anything more confusing than military
postal history!

Bob



It sounds to me like our Bob was in "black ops". If we ever figured
out what all of these different cancels REALLY meant,
(probably some secret code like the hidden language of stamps -
http://www.jaysmith.com/Resource/Art...can_codes.html )
someone would probably have to shoot us. d8*)

Blair

On Apr 26, 1:20 pm, Bobstamp wrote:
Google was really slow at uploading my reply to Dave, so I contacted
him by e-mail.
(snip)
Bob

Bob:

I'm glad that it is not just me. In the last week or so, my
messages here have taken from 2.5 to 32.0 hours to appear on
Google Groups. It used to be a matter of minutes. Go figure!

Blair