DD Form 1386 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 1386, Ocean Cargo Manifest Recapitulation or Summary, April 2006, and it exists to Ocean Cargo Manifest Recapitulation or Summary. What the DD prefix records is an administrative judgment made long before your copy was printed: this transaction was determined to be common to the whole Department rather than peculiar to one service, and so the documentation of it was standardized at Department level.
That decision has consequences you will notice. Because not stated prescribes the form for the Department as a whole, and not stated maintains it on the Department's behalf, the same blank passes between the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Space Force, the Coast Guard when operating under Defense jurisdiction, the defense agencies and the combatant commands without translation. A clerk in one component reads a record created in another and finds the fields where they expect them.
You are looking for edition not stated, listed as not stated. Department-wide supersession is a single event rather than a rollout, which is what distinguishes edition currency on a DD form from the same question on a service publication: nobody anywhere is still accepting the previous version out of habit.
Work down the page in the printed order, and understand why the order exists. The identifying block establishes whose record this is and under what circumstances it arises. The body of the form then answers questions that are only meaningful once that context is fixed. The signature block comes last because a certification signed before the entries are complete certifies nothing.
Verify the printed edition against not stated first. Field structure shifts between editions, and the office that receives your record is reading the current one. That office may sit outside your service, which removes even the informal accommodation you might expect from a colleague who used the old version last month.
Unclear entries are resolved from the printed instructions first and from not stated where the two texts diverge.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering 1 pages with roughly 171 fields.
All of it downloads without charge. Where care is needed is in the reader you choose. A fillable pdf depends on field properties that desktop applications honour and browser previews frequently ignore, so work locally rather than inside a browser window.
What the form asks for
- Press space bar to mark X in first box if Recapitulation (line 8 and 9a applicable), or second box if Summary (line 8 and 9b applicable).
- Mark X in first box if original, second box if revised.
- 1. Vessel name.
- 2. Status.
- 3. Voyage document number.
- 4. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no separators).
- 5. Loading port.
- 6. Heavy lifts.
- 7. Outsize dimension.
- Page number.
- Number of pages.
- 8. Description and location of heavy lifts and other special data. Lines a and b (both Recapitulation and Summary): (1) destination port, line 1 of 11.
- (2) If line a (Recapitulation), Description. If line b (summary), commodity category.
- (3) If line a (recapitulation), length-width-height. If line b (summary), for MSC use only.
- (4) If line a: self-sustaining?
- (5) If line a: non-self-sustaining?
- (6) Vessel (line a only).
- (7) Cargo (line a only).
- If line a (recapitulation): (8) Stow location. If line b (summary): (4) Transportation code.
- If line a (recapitulation): (9) Long tons. If line b (summary): (5) On deck.
- 9. Total cargo loaded. (1) If line a (recapitulation): Destination port. If line b (Summary): Number of units - privately owned vehicles, mail or other.
- 9.(2) Service (line a only).
- 9.(3) Long tons (line a only).
- 9.(4) Measurement tons (line a and b).
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
When DD Form 1386 cites another form, the citation is self-sufficient. The DD series is a single sequence administered at Department level, so the number resolves to exactly one document without any need to establish which component issued it — a convenience that exists only because the sequence was never allowed to fork.
Where a service form is cited in the same instruction, the two numbering systems should not be read across. DA numbering belongs to the Army and is administered by an Army proponent; DD numbering belongs to the Department and is administered by not stated or an equivalent Department office. The systems developed separately and were never harmonized, so identical digits in each identify two documents with nothing in common. The prefix, not the number, tells you which system you are in.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 1386?
- DD Form 1386, Ocean Cargo Manifest Recapitulation or Summary, April 2006
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?