Army Air Medal—learning why it was awarded

Factual Questions
1

Hi folks,

My grandfather (now passed) was awarded the Air Medal for his service as a spotter in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Is there any chance that the Army keeps records of the circumstances the medal was based on? If so, how do I get access to it?

Thanks,

Rhythmdvl

2

The Army should have records for all medals and awards, but a fire in the 1970s destroyed most of the personnel records from WW2. Your best bet is to write to your Congresscritter and have them look into it for you.

3

Start here. It might help to have one of your parents make the online request.

You should know that in the 1970s, there was a fire at the National Personnel Records Center that destroyed a great many documents. While there is no doubt that a record of why the medal was awarded did exist at one time, a great many of these records have unfortunately been lost.

Nevertheless, I wish you the best on your efforts!

4

I worked with Veterans records for a while; here is more info about this.

The fire was at the National Personel Records Center in St. Louis, MO on July 12, 1973.

It destroyed the following records:

  • about 80% of the records for Army personnel discharged between Nov 1, 1912 and Jan 1, 1960.
  • about 75% of the records for Air Force personnel with last names from “Hubbard” through “Z” discharged between Sep 25, 1947 and Jan 1, 1964.
    Generally, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard records were not damaged.

See http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/fire-1973.html for more info, and some horrifying pictures of all those records going up in flames.

There were no microfilm copies, no backups, not even an index of these files. If your file was one of those destroyed, you may have difficulty even proving you were ever in the military when applying for veterans benefits.

But they can reconstruct these records, in some cases.

  • there was a separate center with about 20 million final pay vouchers. These records are sufficient to prove military service, and eligibility for veterans benefits.
  • there was a seperate Army Surgeon General’s datafile of admissions to military hospitals during 1942-1945 and 1950-1954. About 3/4ths of this was recoverable, and these records are available.
  • most military bases kept local copies of records of personnel assigned to the base. Often, these records are still in storage somewhere at the base. If you can identify where & when someone was, the military may be able to reconstruct much of the record. Besides the details from that base, the record usually says where they came from, and where they went to next. So they can then repeat this reconstruction process from those 2 other bases. This can take a long while, but often much of the record can be reconstructed. At least enough to indicate dates & places of service, which is often all that is needed to prove eligibility for veterans benefits.

If you have your copy of military records that were lost in the fire, you can send a copy to the NPRC, and they will use it to rebuild the file for that person.

P.S. Do NOT pay anyone to get these records for you, or to allegedly get them faster for you. There are dozens of internet sites who claim to do this. They are all frauds!

All they do is submit the same forms you can do yourself (for free) thru the site given by ravenman, but charge you a lot of money for this ‘service’. Don’t let them scam you!

5

We do have some papers from his service. Would it be helpful in the general sense (i.e. not just to learn about his medal) to send them copies? That is, are they interested in rebuilding the records for the sake of rebuilding the records?

6

Don’t get too excited… the Air Medal just means he was aircrew for something like five missions- nothing too exciting.

My grandfather had something like 6-7 oak leaf clusters on his air medal- it just meant that he flew 5-10 missions in the light bombers before he got transferred to the heavies and completed his 25 missions there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Medal

7

That was in the ETO during WWII. I believe that other theaters had different standards. The medal was also awarded for especially valuable services other than air combat.

8

As they state, their primary mission is providing records for veterans to enable them to obtain various veterans benefits.

As your grandfather is deceased, and probably has no children still minors, his file is not of primary importance to them.

But their secondary mission is to provide for historical records, and assistance with research projects. So they would probably like to have copies of the record for those reasons.

And the fact that the people there are archivist types, so they naturally seem to want to save all records!

I’d go ahead and send them copies.