Researching America’s Military

Records and History

By Wayne Martin
Introduction
Sometime in the mid-90s I become interested in just how useful the Internet/WEB investigating my
family’s history. I had been to a couple Mormon Family Genealogy centers and realized that with both
my parent’s families being in British Colonies since the mid-1600s, this was not going to be an easy task.
I noticed that there were a goodly number of genealogy-oriented websites available. People using these
sites seemed friendly, offering information about sources and methods of researching various topics.
From reading the postings on some of these sites, I came across a couple postings from people who
were looking for missing WWII relatives. I decided to start honing my online genealogical skills on two
of these missing GIs.

The first search request came from a Warrant Officer in the Swedish military. She was looking for
information about a great Aunt who had immigrated to the US in the early 1900s. The Warrant Officer
had obtained some information about the family up until the 1940s—enough to know that one of her
American relatives had been in the Army Air Forces during WWII. I was able to rather quickly find that
this man had been shot down over Rumania, surviving his incarceration in a German POW camp.
Returning to the US after War’s end, he lived out his years in the Chicago area. When provided this
information, the Warrant Office contacted her missing American relatives who filled in the gaps in her
knowledge of her American family.

The next search took me months to complete because all I had was a name, and the claim that this man
had been on the Doolittle Raid in 1942. This information proved to be false. The other bit of
information came from a scrap of paper claiming that he might have been shot down over Japan in 1943
or 1944. This information ultimately proved to be true.

As I started researching these missing WWII GIs, I found that my knowledge of WWII was very thin--
leading me to start researching WWII itself. I was soon to realize that WWII is incredibly well
documented – in the records primarily generated by the Allied and Axis militaries. These primary
documents are full of names, jargon, slang, photographs and data that requires more than casual
familiarity for full understanding of the information found in these documents. American records are
scattered throughout the US government’s various archives, and increasingly these days – digitized and
online.

Even in the mid-1990s, there was a lot of information about WWII online. Since it seemed that this
fellow I was chasing was an airman, most of my time was spent trying to understand air operations
during the war. The clue “1943 or 1944 over Japan” caused me to focus on B-29 operations. Every
website where air operations were discussed emphasized the importance of Missing Air Crew Reports
(MACRs) as the starting point for researching plane crashes and missing airmen. However, in order to
request a MACR, one needed a certain amount of information – such as the plane’s serial number, the
crash date and likely location. Since I had only the airman’s name—I was frustrated in requesting a
MACR from the sources available at the time. I saw a few notices on these websites from professional
researchers offering their services to enter the National Archives site where military original documents
were stored and manually search for MACRs. I engaged one such person who was able to quickly
provide a copy of the MACR that documented the crash of the airman that I was researching. This
MACR provided the needed name of the plane, the plane’s serial number and the names and Army
identification numbers for the crew. The door was now open—allowing me to make quite a bit of
progress in locating more records about this man—Lt. Benjamin Franklin Edwards.

In this contribution, I want to share some of the resources I’ve used, or know about, with the people
who might be interested in researching WWII, other military history, or search for missing relatives. The
following resources have proven very helpful to me:

General Military/Historical Research Resources

WWII Finding Aids:
https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/finding-aids.html

NARA/Individual Military Personnel Records

Of course, researching family members who were in the US Military should start in the St. Louis NARA
archive--

https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/military-personnel

https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/fire-1973

Don’t forget that on July 12, 1973, a disastrous fire at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC)
destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files (OMPF).

Also, don’t forget that the St. Louis archive can’t always find the records with which it has been
entrusted. There could be a fee of upwards of $100—depending on the volume of copying involved.

Other Military Service Records:

https://www.archives.gov/st-louis/other-records

Morning Reports and Unit Rosters:

https://www.archives.gov/personnel-records-center/military-personnel/morning-reports-and-unit-
rosters.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2

WWII Casualty Lists

At the end of WWII, there were perhaps 400,000 dead and missing military members. The air campaign
in Europe saw about 80,000 American airmen lost alone—with no clear evidence of what happened to
them at war’s end. Dead service members with Identifiable remains were declared as KIA (Killed in
Action). But without remains, the government decided to declare those missing with the status of
“Finding of Death” (FOD) rather than KIA. This allowed families to deal with the loss of their loved ones
to proceed with their lives, terminating whatever legal linkages they had to the missing service
members.

NARA has made image files of these lists. There are about 400,000 names in these files. The names are
organized by states where the service member enlisted.

WWII Army and Army Air Forces Casualties:

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/army-casualties

WWII Navy Casualty Lists:

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/navy-casualties

Over the years, thousands of service members’ remains have been located and returned to the US for
internment. Unfortunately, these casualty lists don’t seem to have been updated with the recovery of
the dead servicemen.

Missing Air Crew Reports (MACRs)

https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/missing-air-crew-reports

MACRs are created within twenty-four hours of the disappearance of a military aircraft. As mentioned
above, pertinent information about the missing plane, its crew, details about the loss of the aircraft that
can be provided by eyewitnesses can be found in this record. If searching for a missing airman, or
airplane—having the MACR is a necessity before getting too involved in such an endeavor.
Maxwell Airforce Base Records Repository

The military generates a lot of paperwork. After WWII, records of the Army Air Corps (renamed
the US Army Air Forces during 1941) ended up at Maxwell Field, in Alabama. The Army then set
about to microfilm these records—which included unit records, flight manuals, MACRs, personal
and unit citations, photos, maps, charts, and so on. The quality of these microfilm varies, since a
lot of the originals were carbon copies and often not very readable. But, by-and-large, these
microfilm are extremely useful for finding details about unit operations. Presumably, Maxwell
has digitized these films for distribution by compact disc. Anyone interested in air operations
during WWII should spend time reviewing the materials available from Maxwell.

Maxwell Airforce Base: US Army Air Corps Records

https://www.afhra.af.mil/Home/Welcome/

Records of the Army Air Forces [AAF]

https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/018.html

Air Force Historical Research Agency

https://www.afhra.af.mil/

The Air Force Historical Research Agency is the repository for Air Force historical
documents. The Agency's collection, begun in Washington, DC, during World War II,
moved in 1949 to Maxwell Air Force Base, the site of Air University, to provide research
facilities for professional military education students, the faculty, visiting scholars, and
 the general public. It consists today of over 70,000,000 pages devoted to the history of
the service and represents the world's largest and most valuable organized collection of
documents on US military aviation.

Microfilm/microfiche readers are increasingly hard to find in public libraries—with so much material
now available online. But there are small, inexpensive readers intended for home use. There are a
goodly number of microfilm/microfiche to JPG format conversion services online. But with many of
these old microfilm reels containing up to 2,000 frames, the cost to convert very many of these reels
would likely be expensive. If interested in any of these old files, it probably would pay to contact
Maxwell directly and talk to the archivist to see what might have been converted to digital by now.

Video History

Youtube is a fantastic site for beginning to research virtually every topic known to man. There are
hundreds of hours of documentary videos available here – as well as many videoed lectures of
university-level classes and seminars. A great place to research history – particularly WWI and WWII.

Youtube
www.Youtube.com

WWII Air War

Rise of the Concepts of Strategic Bombing

At the end of WWI, the technology of aircraft was in its infancy. Although airplanes were utilized by the
militaries of the belligerents during that conflict—but more-or-less without much effect on any desirable
strategic war outcomes. After the war’s end, a handful of visionaries in the US, British and German
militaries began to theorize, and experiment, with how aircraft could be better utilized in future wars.
The view of the future of each of the militaries differed, resulting in the development of short-ranged
fighter/fighter-bombs to long-ranged bombers.

There were internal conflicts in all of the major powers’ militaries about the role of airpower—as to
whether airpower could achieve promises of reducing the need for ground armies needed to neutralize,
and defeat the enemy or only occupy a role of close combat support and not reduce the need for
conventional ground combat forces. These conflicts and differing views are discussed in the link below--

Strategic Bombing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing

US Strategic Bombers

During the 1930s, the US Military (primarily the Army) experimented with bomber design. As can be
seen from the list of bombers above, only a handful of the designs were ever built in any numbers.
Given the geographic isolation of the United States, the emerging Air Corps focused on heavy, long-
range, bombers. Germany and Japan did not build long-range air assets—planning more for a role of
airpower as ground combat support and short-range bombing missions. These decisions on the part of
our future enemies eventually provided the US and Britain a decisive advantage in the air when the dark
clouds of war descended on the world in the next decade.

US Bomber Aircraft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_bomber_aircraft

The Boeing B-29

When the Germans began WWII in September, 1939, US war planners recognized the likelihood of the
US having to engage in the growing European war. They theorized how the Germans might attack the
Americas. One scenario saw the Germans crossing from Africa to South America. Planners then thought
that having air assets that could fly from bases in the interior of the US to attack German occupation
zones in, say, Brazil, would require a new bomber.

While Roosevelt was promising the US voters that he would not take the county to war in the 1940
election cycle, he knew that that was a promise he would not likely be able to keep. So, in December
1939, he authorized the Air Corps to issue a formal specification for a so-called "superbomber", that
could deliver 20,000 pounds of bombs to a target 2,667 miles away and at a speed of 400 miles per
hour. There was no thought at the time of having to attack the Japanese islands, however.

The B-29 was Boeings’ response to this request for this new “superbomber”.

B-29 Profile:
https://www.boeing.com/history/products/b-29-superfortress.page

B-29 History:
https://www.b29-superfortress.com/b29-superfortress-links-resources.htm

Boeing B-29 Production Plants:

https://www.b29-superfortress.com/b29-superfortress-production-assembly-plants.htm

The B-29’s Battle of Kansas:

https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0212b29/

WWII Warplane Websites

These few websites are just the tip-of-the-tip-of-the-iceberg when it comes to WWII warplane
information sources--

B-17 History:
http://457thbombgroup.org/New/b17links.html

B-25 History:
https://b-25history.org/

B-24 History:
https://b-24.weebly.com/
P-51 History:
https://www.mustangsmustangs.com/p-51/

P-51’s became an essential component of strategic bombing because they were able to accompany B-
17s over Germany, and B-29s over Japan once Okinawa and Iwo Jima had been captured from the
Japanese.

https://www.b29-superfortress.com/

B29-superfortress.com was the most helpful to me when I finally began to make progress locating Lt.
Edwards.

Rosaria’s Rocket MACR (Lt. Benjamin E. Franklin’s Plane):

https://www.pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/b-29/42-24656.html

Effects of Strategic Bombing

Starting in late 1944, and extending into 1947, President Roosevelt authorized what was to become the
United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) to produce an impartial assessment of the effects of
Anglo-American strategic bombing of Nazi Germany during the European theatre of World War II. After
this report was finished, the survey team turned their attention to Japan, which by then had
surrendered.

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Strategic_Bombing_Survey

The report, along with some 200 supporting documents, was released on 30 September
1945. The major conclusion of the report was that strategic bombing, particularly the
destruction of the oil industry and truck manufacturing, had greatly contributed to the
success of the Allies in World War II. However, despite the overall contribution of the
bombing, the survey concluded that the impact of strategic bombing could not be
separated from the general collapse of Germany in 1945.
The sources below provide access to digital copies of many of the reports in the European and
Pacific sections of the USSBS:

Internet Archive:
www.archive.org (search key=”united states strategic bombing survey”)

https://www.amazon.com/USSBS-Strategic-Bombing-Summary-Pacific/dp/B00GF11GME

United States Strategic Bombing Survey Reports:

https://www.airforcemag.com/article/1011ussbs/

(Some Dead Links)

Public’s Library and Digital Archive:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/

USSBS European War Summary:

https://www.anesi.com/ussbs02.htm

USSBS Pacific War Summary:

https://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm

NARA USSBS Records Inventory and Physical Location:

https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/243.html

Reports of USSBS Held at Library of Congress:

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trsbombingsurvey.html

PDF Files of USSBS Reports (Pacific War) Available From Internet Archive:
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=163578

USSBS Summary Reports (European and Pacific):

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=united%20states%20strategic
%20bombing%20survey

USSBS Page Images:

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101667697

PDF of USSBS Summary Report (Pacific):

http://navgunschl2.sakura.ne.jp/tenji/USSBS_Pac/USSBS_Sum_Pac_E.pdf

USSBS Japanese Documents:

https://rnavi.ndl.go.jp/kensei/tmp/USB_18_3.pdf

Japanese Occupation Materials (in Japanese, but Google will translate):

https://rnavi.ndl.go.jp/kensei/
Interrogations of Japanese Officials - Vols. I & II:
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-
alphabetically/i/interrogations-japanese-officials-voli.html

North Pacific Signals Intelligence:

https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-
quarterly/Radio_Intelligence.pdf

Guide to the Reports of the USSBS (Pacific):

https://archive.org/details/campaignsofpacif46unit/page/n1/mode/2up

Various Documents About WWII:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28United%20States%20Strategic%20Bombing%20Survey
%29%29

World War II in the Pacific/Chronology Dec 1941--Aug 1945:

http://www.ww2pacific.com/chron.html

This is a day-by-day chronology of the air war in the Pacific Theater. This information can be helpful for
reconstruction of unit activities.

Invasion of Japan/Operation Downfall:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

WWII Websites

There are far too many WWII Websites to reference. Those below have proven useful to me in the
past--

Public Broadcasting System:

http://www.pbs.org/thewar/resources.htm

Best WWII Websites:

http://besthistorysites.net/ww2/

CSPAN
www.c-span.org

CSPAN maintains an archive of its broadcasts that include lectures and book readings/reviews of books
on American history and its wars.
Online Article Databases
The Internet/WEB is awash with websites where articles about anything and everything can be found. I
found that JSTOR was more than adequate for my needs—

JSTOR
www.jstor.org

JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in
75 disciplines. Hard not to find interesting information in this archive. But, given that many of the papers
are decades old, the information, and/or predictions often are dated, or proven wrong by the passage of
time, and/or more recent research. JSTOR offers free, but limited, access to its materials to the public.
However, many public libraries have subscriptions with JSTOR which allows library members to
download as many of these papers as they wish.

JSTOR is a great source of academic research, which includes a vast source of references.

The Internet Archive

www.archive.org

The Internet Archive is a non-profit library containing millions of free books, movies, software, music,
websites, and other materials. When Google Books was beginning to scan books for its website, many
librarians were outraged that titles from public libraries should be published on a commercial website—
much less by the growing giant Google. There were many complaints about Google’s ignoring the
prevailing view of copyright restrictions at the time—so some libraries refused to partner with Google.
The Internet Archive became a non-profit library, which allowed many of these stand-off libraries to
allow the Internet Archive to scan and upload books that often can not be found in the Goggle
collection.

19th Century American Historical Literature and Periodicals

The Making of America collections, hosted at the University of Michigan and Cornell College, provide
access to a substantial collection of periodicals, and books that were published during the 19 th Century.
These collections offer the researcher access to the making of the American mind—which was under
constant evolution during the first half of that century.

This collection is a little hard to use, in that it does not allow downloading of whole files. Instead, the
holdings are presented via a page-by-page access.

Making of America Collections:

http://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/waro.html
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moagrp/
The American Civil War

It is hard to find any conflict in the history of man that has generated more interest (in terms of the
written word) than the dissolution of the US Federal government in 1861—followed by the War
Between the States.

My interest in how the US political system failed in US prior to the disunion of the States led to my
research into that period. Further, I also researched some of the less-studied areas of the war—such as
the fiscal systems implemented by the North and the South to pay for their war efforts, as well as how
the Confederacy tried to build a navy.

While investigating the Federal Repository Library holdings in Stanford’s Green Library, I came upon a
collection of historical volumes of whose existence I was unaware. This collection was the “Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Armies” and the “Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Navies”. These military-generated records were complied over several decades by the US Federal
government from archival and personal sources. Confederate records were particularly difficult to
acquire—since many were burned when Richmond was abandoned by the Confederate government in
1865.

The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies:
https://www.loc.gov/item/03003452/

The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Civil War:

https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records

Civil War: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies:

https://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/military/civil-war-armies-records.html

Official Records Available for Sale:

https://www.amazon.com/War-Rebellion-Official-Records-Confederate/dp/0918678072

Downloadable Copies of Official Records:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_War_of_the_Rebellion/xf8UAAAAYAAJ?
hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=official+records+of+the+war+of+the+rebellion&printsec=frontcover

Downloadable Compendium of the Official Records:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_compendium_of_the_War_of_the_Rebellion/OBkNAQAAM
AAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=official+records+of+the+war+of+the+rebellion&printsec=frontcover

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Official_Records_of_the_Union_and_Confed/MlJAAQAAMAAJ?
hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=official+records+of+the+union+and+confederate&printsec=frontcover

The American Civil War

https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records

Official Records of The Union and Confederate Navies:

https://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/ofre.html
Civil War Photographs:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Library of Congress (LOC) Photos Free To Use:

https://www.loc.gov/free-to-use/

The Library of Congress (LOC)

The Library of Congress is America’s premier repository of materials relating to our nation’s intellectual
and political history. I visited the Library of Congress a couple times looking for primary documents
relating to my Civil War researches.

There are several divisions open to the public. My interests led me to the Main Reading Room--

LOC Main Reading Room:

https://www.loc.gov/rr/main/

In order to visit this resource, one has to first obtain an identification card, which means providing a
driver’s license and allowing one’s picture to be taken and affixed to this card. Requests for research
materials are made to attendants—who will bring the materials of interest. Depending on one’s
research interests—these materials could be microfilm, personal items, or unpublished manuscripts.

There are copy machines available. People are also allowed to photograph materials with digital
devices. When exiting the Main Reading Room—the guards will examine every document in your
possession to insure than no originals are being improperly removed.

LOC Finding aids are provided via the following links--

LOC Finding Aids:

https://findingaids.loc.gov/

LOC Manuscript Room Finding Aids:

https://www.loc.gov/rr/mss/f-aids/

Digitized Online Newspapers:

Due to the unsustainable requirements for storing paper copies of newspapers—libraries and other
archival entities long ago committed these papers into a microfilm format. People wanting to use these
older newspapers would have to travel to the libraries/archives where the microfilm was stored. Let it
be noted that Microfilm is not easy to use. In my case, after about an hour of continuous use, I ended
felling I was sea-sick—reducing the number of hours a day that I could use these microfilm resources.

Library of Congress Digitized Newspapers:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/
https://www.loc.gov/collections/

Google Historic Newspaper Archive:

https://news.google.com/newspapers

Google had originally promised to digitize all (or most) of the country’s historic newspapers.
Unfortunately, this promise didn’t last very long. However, there are some papers which were printed
before and during the American Civil War that were digitized and are being kept online as a partial
fulfilment of this original promise.

Those groups digitizing old newspapers sometimes convert the images to text via Optical Character
Recognition (OCR). For the most part, these efforts generate a lot of mangled text. However, the digital
images of each page generally are readable, depending on how well preserved the paper was when the
digital images were made.

New York Times Archive:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/nytarchive.html

Articles from about 1851 until the present can be found in the New York Times archive. There is a
paywall now in place. However, this is an excellent archive and worth the fee.

California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC):

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/

The California Digital Newspaper Collection has digitized many of the papers published in California
which are out-of-copyright, or out-of-business--going back to 1846. While the collection only contains
newspapers that could be legally digitized and made available to the public, there is nonetheless quite a
bit of information in this collection. Particularly of interest (to me) is how the nature of news reporting
has evolved over the decades.

The CDNC’s digitized newspapers are stored on a website that provides access to the digital images of
each page, and OCRed text of each page. The OCRed text is often garbled, but this website offers the
user the ability to correct the spelling for the mangled text. Then, the corrected text can be downloaded
into a document of your choice for subsequent use.

Libraries
Libraries are obviously a great source of historical information. Worldcat is a free service which finds
titles in libraries that have authorized access to their on-line catalogs. This information is useful when
trying to locate hard-to-find books in your area.

Worldcat:
https://www.worldcat.org/

Link+ Interlibrary Loan System:

https://sfpl.libanswers.com/faq/103121
http://answers.aclibrary.org/faq/248177
Residents of California and Nevada have access to a service called Link+, which is an innovative
Interlibrary program allowing public library members to request books from any of the Link+ member
libraries located in California and some Nevada libraries. Many of the Link+ library members are
university and colleges—which routinely are not open to the public. Requested books are free, thanks
to support from the State of California. There are about 11M books available for access via Link+, about
4.5 million titles are unique. Hard-to-find titles are frequently located in a Link+ member library.

Federal Repository Libraries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Depository_Library_Program

“The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a government program created to

make U.S. federal government publications available to the public at no cost. As of
March 2018, there are 1,141 depository libraries in the United States and its territories.
A "government publication" is defined in the U.S. Code as "informational matter which is
published as an individual document at Government expense, or as required by law" (44
U.S.C. 1901).”

Federal Repository System Website:

https://www.fdlp.gov/

Information About Federal Repository Libraries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Federal_depository_libraries

U.S. Federal Depository Library Program:

https://www.doi.gov/library/collections/federal-documents

On-line PhD Dissertations and Master’s Theses

PhD and Master’s Theses can provide access to academic research that too often never sees the light of
day after the papers’ authors receive their degrees and move on to other interests. Many Universities
have financial agreements with on-line database companies to make dissertations and theses available
to the students of these schools for free, and to the public for a fee. Also, a lot of Universities/Colleges
are digitizing such papers and often topics of interest can be found via the institution’s on-line catalog
and downloaded from those sources.

PhD Dissertations
https://www.proquest.com/products-services/dissertations/Find-a-Dissertation.html

Open Access Theses and Dissertations:

https://oatd.org/

OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses
and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses)
comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently
indexes 5,018,496 theses and dissertations.
https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/ebsco-open-dissertations

EBSCO Open Dissertations is a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs to increase

traffic and discoverability of ETD research. You can join the movement and add your
theses and dissertations to the database, making them freely available to researchers
everywhere while increasing traffic to your institutional repository.

Ten Dissertation Databases:

https://blog.thesishelp.net/dissertation-database/

Stanford Library Dissertations and Theses:

https://library.stanford.edu/guides/find-dissertations-and-theses

The End of The Search for Lt. Edwards:

Once I had the MACR for loss of Edwards’s B-29, I was able to move forward since I now had a unit name
where Edwards was posted. I was then able to find people who had served with Edwards during his
training, and even flew with him before the crash. Eventually I discovered a copy of the USSBS in the
Stanford Library were the Federal Repository materials are housed. Looking at the volumes that dealt
with Japan, I was able to locate a bomb plot of the target area where Edward’s plane was shot down.
Subsequently, I was able to locate him in a group grave in the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery,
Missouri.

That probably should have been the end of the search, but I had turned up too much information to
stop there. A little more searching turned up actual videos of B-29s in action over Japan, and in transit
to-and-from Japan. Two of those videos can be viewed at the links below:

Target Tokyo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj-DclAxCcc

The Last Bomb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrrGaPnOqng

This actual movie footage taken by Army photographers puts us into the B-29s, providing us with more
than enough information to understand how difficult life was for these airmen, as well as how
dangerous life was for these aircrews. (The mortality rates for these bomber crews typically ran as high
as 50%, if memory serves.)

Wrap Up
My intent with this contribution was originally to highlight the United States Strategic Bombing Survey
(USSBS). However, as I thought about my original goal was finding Edwards--a very small need in a very,
very, large haystack-- I realized that I would share as many of the resources that I can remember using
locating him as well.
Since that time, new resources have appeared on-line, most offering digitized records that in the past
were only accessible in hardcopy, or microfilm, format to people who traveled to the locations where
those resources were housed.

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey is worthy of being reviewed by itself, perhaps at a later
time.

Soon, our WWII Vets will be gone. With their passage, their eye-witness accounts of that conflict will
disappear also. If we don’t keep this history alive, we will lose a national treasure of incomprehensible
value—a group of Americans that can rightly be called: “our greatest generation”

Wayne Martin is an independent researcher.