Radio Compass
A new feature recently added is the Field Finder. This will help you determine where Army Air Fields were located. Find fields near a particular city, or in a particular state, country, or region. If you know an air field by name, select that to see where it was located. Also discover the fields where a particular type of training was conducted, like primary flight schools.
I’m often asked if the AAF Collection has information on a specific person. The collection does have hundreds of training class books. These are like high school year books, except they were produced for a training class at a particular Army Air Field or other training facility. Classes lasted anywhere from four to ten, or even twenty, weeks. Separate classes sometimes overlapped their training at the same base.
Thus at a particular facility, there may have been dozens of class books produced during a given year. Once a class graduated, cadets were generally stationed at another Army Air Field to begin their next class. For example pilots underwent pre-flight, then Primary Flight, then Basic Flight, and then Advanced Flight classes, all at separate Air Fields.
Unfortunately I do not have additional information or records about individual cadets or instructors beyond what you see in the class books. At one time I wanted to index the names and hometowns of those pictured in the class books. That would now be a monumental undertaking, but I may do so in the coming years.
How Do I Find a Particular Person?
Print or E-Mail
Please note a couple new features of the collection. You can now save a copy of the Item Detail page for your records.
There are two ways to do this. You can either print the Item Detail page, or you can have it sent to you as an e-mail.
This is handy for several reasons. Suppose you download an item in the collection to your computer. You can now save the Item Detail page that corresponds to that item. Or, suppose you find one or more items in the collection that interest you and you want to save the details for later reference. Or, you want to share an item you found with a friend or colleague who might be interested in it as well.
There have been many interesting comments posted by visitors to the AAF Collection. Some were posted by actual veterans who reminisced about their time during World War II. Some were posted by relatives of veterans who were excited to find a picture of their loved one. These comments are becoming a useful resource in and of themselves.
To make them easier to share and read through, you can now see comments in the item list.
You can now browse the collection by class or unit number. Suppose you know a relative who was in class 44-D, but you’re not sure at which air field he or she was stationed. You can display the items associated with all classes that were numbered 44-D. This narrows down the book in which your relative might appear.
Each of several air fields had a class 44-D, but these were all separate and unrelated class groups. For example, class 44-D at one field may have been a primary pilot class, while at another field 44-D was an advanced pilot class.
To browse by class or unit, follow these steps.
I added a new feature I call Collections to the site. These are groups of various and different items that are related in some way. For instance, a Collection can contain all the items contributed from one veteran’s collection. So even though items have different subject matter or come from different air fields, they are still grouped together as a collection.
While you view the list of items, you’ll see a View Collection indication on some items. This means an item is part of a collection. Click it to view a list of all items in the collection.
You can also browse the collections available. Choose Browse the Collection in the Choose an Action drop-down box. Then choose Collections in the Browse drop-down box. You’ll then be able to select one of the available collections. More collections will be added.
Or, choose Summarize under Choose an Action, then Collections to see more information about each collection.
The Collections feature within the AAF Collection is yet another way to view relationships between items. It may lead you to some interesting discoveries.
To See Items in the Collection:
