How is the indexing of a Class Book processed?
It all starts with the availability of a Class Book.
We have been granted permission from Mr. Mike Voisin to download class books from his excellent website Army Air Forces Collection.
The following class book was downloaded from Mike's site and indexed by of Fields of Honor Foundation colleague Ria.
All cadet info is processed into an Excel sheet stating surname, first name, residence, state, and the page number where the portrait photo was found within the class book.
Subsequently the indexed names are compared with the Burial Registers of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
In case of a 'hit' the relevant info is added to the spreadsheet.
For example: James F. Gatlin went missing in action on 23rd of December 1944. His unit was the 391st Bomb Group / 575th Bomb Squadron. 1Lt Gatlin is commemorated on the Henri Chapelle Cemetery Walls of the Missing.
Note: Lt Gatlin's body has been recovered and since 2015 he rests in the Florida National Cemetery in the USA.
Note that the found class book photograph has been used in the above form of the Fields of Honor Database.
This is the essence of the USAAF Class Book Project; to add a face to a name!
Below is shown the final result of the indexing of Pilot Class Book 43-F / Pampa Field / California:
The index of 218 names in the class book resulted in finding 15 photographs of USAAF pilots who were Killed In Action (KIA) and are buried in an ABMC Cemetery or went Missing in Action (MIA) and are commemorated on Walls / Tablets of the Missing at an ABMC Cemetery.
Final results: 4x Ardennes Cemetery / 1x Henri Chapelle / 1x Epinal / 2x Brittany / 2x Cambridge / 1x Florence / 1x Sicily-Rome /2x Honolulu and 1x Manila.
About the green and yellow colors: the green colors indicate info relevant for the projects of the Fields of Honor Foundation, for example 'The Faces of Margraten'.
The info on the yellow colored names are shared with similar projects in Cambridge ('Faces of Cambridge') and Brittany.
Due to the fact that the USAAF Class Book Project has indexed 640+ class books it is now possible to find photographs of the same cadet in multiple class books. The photographs above and below this text are of the Baumgardner brothers; Haynes M. and Robert W. Baumgardner.
Haynes went through following pilot classes: 43-K Uvalde, 43-K Garner Field, 43-K Goodfellow Field and 43-K/44-A Goodfellow Field.
His brother Robert W. Baumgardner went through following classes: 44-F Garner Field, 44-F Waco and 44-F Blackland.
