In June 2017 the USAAF Class Book Project was initiated by Arie-Jan (AJ) van Hees, one of the volunteers of the Fields of Honor Foundation.
Using USAAF Cadet Class Books (now all in the Public Domain and available through several sources on the internet) the initial goal of the Fields of Honor Foundation was to find cadet photographs (pilot / bombardier / navigator) of air crew who are buried or commemorated on the American military cemeteries of Margraten (the Netherlands), Ardennes & Henri-Chapelle (Belgium), Epinal & Lorraine (France) and Luxembourg. Thanks to the indexing work of our volunteers Willem, Corrina, Ria and Arie-Jan the 'Index Team' of the USAAF Class Book Project has so far found 2.100+ photographs for these six cemeteries.
However, additional photographs were also found of USAAF air crew members who are buried or commemorated on the following cemeteries: Normandy, Cambridge, Brittany, Rhone, Sicily-Rome, Florence, North-Africa, East Coast Memorial, West Coast Memorial, Honolulu and Manila. For these cemeteries we have now found 6.900+ cadet photographs.
At present we have indexed 640 class books and hold 140.000+ cadet photographs in our files.
This website has been constructed to show how the USAAF Class Book Project is set up and how we gather, process and share our data.
The Blog page of this website includes several interesting stories in which our research has unearthed yet unpublished material.
Do have a look at, for example, the 4th of July 1942 'Independence Day Raid' or the tragic 'Low Level IJmuiden Raid' of 17th May 1943, when 10 out of 11 aircraft did not return to base. Our research has found 33 portrait photographs of the 34 men who were either killed or missing in action.
If you think that you can contribute to our research, by sharing information, class books or by any other means, do please contact us.