JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas –
An effort underway at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph is ensuring that the flight records and correspondence of the United States’ earliest military aviators will be preserved for decades to come.
The preservation project is taking place at the national headquarters of the Order of Daedalians, an organization dedicated to keeping the legacy of the nation’s more than 14,000 World War I-era pilots alive, honoring today’s top aviators from the armed services and supporting students who aspire to serve their country as military pilots.
“The documents we’re preserving date back to the pilots who served in World War I and who were later active with the Daedalians,” said Maureen DeFelice, Order of Daedalians executive director. “We’ve asked for volunteers to scan the documents and we’re preserving them in the cloud so they aren’t lost.”
At the forefront of the project are 12th Training Squadron Airmen on casual status who have been spending hours each week since Feb. 14 at the Daedalians’ headquarters in building 676, scanning the documents and transferring them to thumb drives for uploading to the organization’s cloud.
One of those volunteers, Airman 1st Class Taylor Lingscheit, who is now assigned to the 319th Security Forces Squadron at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., was involved in the project for about 30 hours a week from the end of March to mid-May.
“My task at the Daedalians was to preserve the history of World War I pilots who served prior to Armistice Day on Nov. 11, 1918,” she said. “I scanned documents into the Daedalians’ system to make it easily accessible to organization members to find history on their fellow brothers and sisters in the armed forces. I also took inventory of members’ information.”
Airmen are combing through files containing the military ratings and records, personal documents, family records, letters and photos of more than 4,000 pilots, DeFelice said. When all those documents and photos are preserved, a process that may take a few years, the records of an additional 10,000 pilots will be scanned.
“Those are simply records of proof that a person was indeed a rated military pilot,” she said.
Research on the Army Air Service and Navy aviators who served during World War I dates back more than 60 years, DeFelice said. Retired Brig. Gen. Harold Clark – who conceived JBSA-Randolph’s unique layout and is considered the father of the Daedalians – worked from 1955 to 1968 to compile data on World War I pilots from all military services.
“Clark worked on the founders’ list, which we call the ‘bible,’” she said, referring to the pilots regarded by the Daedalians as their “founder members.” “He wrote to service units seeking information on the pilots.”
The search continued through the efforts of retired Air Force Col. Bill Stewart, who became the Daedalians’ historian in 1968 and continues to compile the founder members’ history.
The documents not only contain military-related records and correspondence, they also include personal letters that reveal insights into people’s lives, DeFelice said.
“Sometimes they told interesting stories,” she said. “It was a very different time: People would often show more fraternal camaraderie in their letters.”
Lingscheit said she saw documents and photos that spanned the era from World War I to the Cold War.
“I saw pictures of the Wright brothers taking their first flight, aerial photos of cities impacted by the destruction of the Nazis during World War II, a love letter between a pilot and his worried wife back home and Christmas, birthday and anniversary cards exchanged between gentlemen who served together 50 years before,” she said.
Lingscheit’s favorite documents were a series of letters in 1961 between Clark and Gen. James Doolittle, the World War II flying hero who was studying the effects of radioactive fallout at Space Technology Laboratories in Los Angeles at the time.
The project is “preserving a unique piece of history that combines personal family stories with the military records of the pilots,” DeFelice said.
“We’re getting all these records digitized for anyone interested in aviation history,” she said. “It’s very important to us.”
The volunteers are playing an important role in preserving history, DeFelice said.
“It’s been a great help to us,” she said. “We’re really grateful to them for their efforts.”
Working on the records was an experience of a lifetime, Lingscheit said.
“Not many people are aware that this information is out in the public, and very few go looking for it,” she said. “It opened my eyes to the challenges met and victories achieved by past generations. It motivated me to be a better Airman and carry on the legacy of the Daedalians.”