Warbird Information Exchange

What makes an artifact particularly historically valuable is its provenance and context - who owned and how they used it. This is what transforms it from just another item on a shelf to something that stories to be told about it. Unfortunately, it may be lost when it is donated because it isn't recorded.

This project grew out of an attempt to determine how to best capture as much of this information as possible during interactions with the donor. Therefore, the goal was to come up with the best or most complete set of form fields to use on a deed of gift. (Therefore, it is similar to effort to devise a standard set of terms to refer to categorize artifacts as mentioned in a post in the Aviation Museum Libraries thread.) That being said, it may not translate back into the form, as it often seems to prove better to leave the fields open ended. So, alternatively, it could be used to develop something to provide to the donor ahead of time that, even if they didn't fill it out, could spark some ideas as points to mention. (It is worth noting that a few other museums, such as the Fort Monroe Authority's Casemate Museum and Baltimore Museum of Industry, have noted and attempted to address the same issue with similar forms. The Veterans History Project also has a very relevant Biographical Data Form.)

The method was to gather as many examples of wartime forms as possible. After all, why reinvent the wheel when the military did such an excellent job during the war? (Due to the fact it involves forms, there is of course some overlap with the Army Air Forces and Other World War II Forms thread. Indeed, some of the same forms will end up in both threads.) This list is intentionally overkill. Even though all of the categories might not end up being used, it is not clear initially which will be most valuable.

A side benefit of this effort is that the examples collected can serve as an answer to that perennial question of: "Where do I find information about my ancestor's military service?" The standard source for much of this information is, of course, the National Personnel Records Center, but knowing what to look for, what to expect, and where to start can be very useful.

• Basic Information
  
  • Classification Folder: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4 (Source)
  • Soldier's Biography Card: Front, Back (Source)
• Service History
  
  • Certificate of Death: PDF (Source)
  • Expeditions, Engagements, Distinguished Service: PDF (Source)
  • Professional and Conduct Records of [Soldier]: PDF (Source)
  • Service Record: Front Cover, Pages 1-2, Pages 3-4, Pages 5-6, Pages 7-8, Pages 9-10, Pages 11-12, Pages 13-14, Pages 15-16, Pages 17-18, Back Cover (Source)
  • Service Record of [Soldier]: PDF (Source)
• Discharges (For a complete list of forms, see a page on the Veterans Administration website.)
  
  • Certificate of Service/Military Record and Report of Separation: Front, Back (Source)
  • Honorable Discharge/Enlisted Record of [Soldier]: Front, Back (Source)
• Qualifications & Other Purpose Specific Forms
  
  • AAF Officers' Qualification Record: Front, Back (Source)
  • Basic Military Training: Front (Source)
  • Final Grade Sheet (College Training Program): Front (Source)
  • Final Grade Sheet (Preflight School): Front (Source)
  • Individual Flight Record Student: Front (Source)
  • Physical Examination for Flying: Front (Source)
  • P. O. M. Individual Qualification Card for Radio Operator and Mechanic: Front, Back (Source)
  • Separation Qualification Record: PDF (Source)
• Modern
  
  • Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File: Webpage
  • Entitlement to Awards: PDF (Source)
  • Transmittal of and/or Entitlement to Awards: PDF (Source)

Furthermore, there was apparently some level of recognition and encouragement for soldiers to write and keep their own diaries. Interestingly, long before Studs Terkel and the Veterans History Project, there was even some suggestion of these narratives having future historical use. As the book My Life in the Service states in the very first paragraph:

Not unlike sweetheart pillows, it seems a cottage industry was created that published these books. Some were presumably handed out before basic training and others were provided to prisoners of war in care packages. Titles include:

• A Service Man's Memory Book published by the Joe Walter Publishing Co.[1]
• A Wartime Log: A Remembrance from Home Through the American Y.M.C.A. published by the War Prisoners' Aid of the Y.M.C.A.[2][3]
• A Wartime Log for British Prisoners published by the War Prisoners' Aid of the Y.M.C.A.: PDF (Source)
• Air Force Souvenir Handybook published by the United Service Organizations: Pages 76-77, Pages 78-79, Pages 80-81, Pages 82-83, Pages 84-85, Pages 86-87 (Source)
• G-I've Been Around published by C. S. Hammond & Co.[4]
• His Service Record published by Stevens, Inc.[5]
• My Life in the Service published by Consolidated Book Publishers: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12 (Source)

EDIT (25-02-18): Added A Wartime Log for British Prisoners entry with external link and changed name of existing entry to A Wartime Log: A Remembrance from Home Through the American Y.M.C.A..

EDIT (25-06-19): Added A Service Man’s Memory Book entry with external link. Note that, similar to the Service Record in the service history section above that was published by the Cincinnati Enquirer, it was also distributed by a newspaper. This may point to a larger trend.

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

Assignments Table
A while back, I transcribed a World War II veteran's memoir. Upon finishing the text, it was evident that a table of his assignments would be a useful reference, so one was created:

(Source: Keep Up Your Humor and Airspeed by Norman A. Olson.)

However, it was while working on transcribing a second, shorter biography that I realized that: 1) creating a standardized table would be useful and 2) it would be relevant to this thread. Partially due to the increased complexity and also in an attempt to better represent the information, a somewhat different style was tried for the second instance:

(Source: Military Biography by Russell B. Witte, Jr.)

Here is higher a resolution copy of the above:

(Source: Imgur)

The table is ordered chronologically, with the older entries at the top and more recent ones at the bottom. (This format is indirectly inspired by the line-by-line interpretations of aircraft record cards provided by the Air Force Historical Research Agency.) It is divided by subheadings based on each major period of the veteran's service history. With the first example, the situation was relatively simple, with only two different periods: training and operational.

A decision was made to only include assignments and not movements. (e.g. individual missions or stops on the journey to an assignment) This approach was selected for a number of reasons:

• It mirrors the way that it is often summarized or recorded in military records.
• For the above reason, significantly more effort is necessary to locate more detailed information.
• The table is intended as a summary and increased granularity would undermine that purpose.
• Doing so would increase the chances of breaking the format of the table due to a higher likelihood of the data not fitting into the parameters of the established columns.

The first column features two or three different types of information based on the period. Furthermore, note the importance of including the specifics of the location to disambiguate betweent two locations with similar names.

Glossary Table
The glossary table was originally developed as a second sheet for the Excel workbooks in which I was recreating aircraft record cards. (I later found a table in an official government report, possibly from DTIC, that used the same format.) The first instance of this table was for a transcribed version of the logbook for FG-1D, BuNo 92132:

(Source: FG-1 Aircraft Log Book)

From there, it was then utilized on transcribed aircraft record cards, where station codes were included. However, it was only while working on the biography above it was realized that such a table could also be implemented in such a document as well:

(Source: Military Biography by Russell B. Witte, Jr.)

Decorations Table
I have not come up with a good way of representing decorations, but it may be to mirror the awards and decorations section seen in Wikipedia articles. The only change being replacing the visual representations of ribbons with text. The following is for Hap Arnold:

(Source: Wikipedia)

EDIT (24-12-11): Add higher resolution version of Military Biography Assignments Table.

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

As if to prove that the cottage industry of template veterans memoirs is still alive and kicking, I received the following email the other day:

The product, which can be found on their website, is indeed very similar in content to the wartime versions if the sample pictures are any indication.

EDIT (25-06-19): I forgot to mention, the benefit of looking into this advertisement is that it gave me a name for these type of publications: "guided journals".

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

So apparently there's a whole technical manual dedicated to how to fill out the World War II-era service records: TM 12-230 (Source)

EDIT (25-06-19): There's another one from the 1990s for the Marine Corps: Marine Corps Individual Records Administration Manual

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster