US Gandhi cover from US Embassy travelled through US Navy (Naval cover).

As I mentioned in my previous blog post about Naval cover are covers that are from or to Navy personnel stationed overseas or offical purpose for Navy office. Above cover is is not from or to Navy personnel or Office but still carries US Navy FPO, AP 96515 postmark cancel.!!!



From Address is

XXXXX
PSC500-26
DPO, AP, 96515
USA


By looking to this address if you are aware of USA states abbreviations that there is no AP state. Also city name is also weird as never heard about DPO.

I did some research and found out that that this cover is from Embassy of United Sates in Manila, Philippines and send to Venezuela.

This is Diplomatic mail as it was send from US Embassy so it was not carried out by Philippines Postal Service but it was handle by United States MPSA division.

Name: XXXXX
Street Name: PSC500-26
City: DPO (Diplomatic Post Office)
State: AP (Armed Force Pacific)
Zip: 96515


Following will explain how I found out all this.!!



Until 1980, each of the U.S. military Services managed their own mail program. In 1980, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) created Military Postal Service Agency (MPSA) to perform this task with USPS and has a jointly-staffed headquarters located in the National Capital Region. MPSA is required to adhere to United States Postal Service (USPS) rules, federal laws, and various international laws and agreements for movement of military mail into over 85 countries.

USPS and MPSA has addressing scheme so US Military/Navy/Airforce receive mail from family,realtives and friends. Also now a days online retailer ships directly to US Military personnel stationed overseas.

DPO : [Diplomatic Post Office ] : Used by U.S. Embassy.

Following link is US Embassy address in Manila, Philippines.

http://manila.usembassy.gov/wwwh3029.html

So by looking all above mentioned things I had concluded that this Gandhi used cover is from US Embassy and travels through Sea from Philippines to Venezuela. It might have also travelled through Air otherwise it will take long time to reach there.

Thanks for reading and you are welcomed to leave any comments about any questions or concerns.



Thanks

BTW: I had never seen Gandhi Stamp on Embassy covers of any countries so this is a very unique cover for me.