by Paul on January 21, 2010

A response from the Air Force Historical Studies Office (AFHSO) came back much faster than I had anticipated. Surprisingly, it took less than a week. Maybe people who work at the DMV should be required to attend some kind of militaristic style boot camp to learn about efficiency and courtesy. Anyhow, they scanned the actual card and emailed me a PDF file. They aslo composed a text description decoding the card. I’ve posted their message as well as some screenshots of the PDF they sent me.
As a note, there was no charge for this. I just had to send an email with the request. Check out this post if you want to find out how to submit your own request. If anyone at the AFHSO happens to stumble across this blog post let me say thank you very much for the quick response.
I still haven’t heard back from the National Air and Space Museum. If I do I’ll post their response as well.
From the AFHSO

The aircraft was shipped via New Orleans to Kisarazu, Japan for assembly
then returned to the USA. There is no addition information on the aircraft
after the entry for San Monica. San Monica did have an aircraft sales
organizations so it the aircraft may have been dropped from the USAF
inventory after arriving there

6408 MAINTENANCE AND SUPPLY GROUP (SUB DEPOT) ACTIVATED ON 16 JUL 52 AND
BASED AT KISARAZU AIR BASE, HONSHU, JAPAN. MISSION OF 6408 MAINTENANCE AND
SUPPLY GROUP (SUB DEPOT) TO ERECT/DISASSEMBLE AND PREPARE FOR SHIPMENT OF
AIR FORCE AND ARMY AIRCRAFT TO ZONE OF INTERIOR.
by Paul on January 17, 2010
I have restored an x-military aircraft and I want to know if it was used at home or abroad. The manufacturer’s record will only tell you what the initial assignment was. For example, it notes that my aircraft was initially assigned to the Korean War, but that’s where it stops. Now the question is, how do I find out if it was actually deployed?
First stop… Google, and after a lot of searching for the wrong things I finally ran across something called “Aircraft History Cards”.
According the the National Air and Space Museum, An Aircraft History Card (or the USAF “Individual Aircraft Record Card”) is a compilation of the inventory history of a single aircraft, showing the location or controlling unit and status of that aircraft at a given time. In most cases, this history covers the period from the acceptance of the aircraft by the controlling service until it is removed from that service’s inventory.
You can read more about these and how to obtain them here.
It seems that the NASM only has AirForce records from the late 1920’s through 1953 and Navy records through September 30th 1986. However they do provide physical addresses that you can send requests to for information about aircraft not in their archives.
Another option is to contact the Airforce Historical Research Agency. I found the following exerpt on this page.
Individual Aircraft Record Cards
We and the AFHSO maintain individual aircraft record cards for almost all aircraft once or presently in the United States Air Force inventory. The records for many aircraft of the early 1920s and for aircraft in highly sensitive reconnaissance programs are not available. Each set of aircraft records has its own unique characteristics, but for most planes one may learn the manufacturer, place of production, date of entry into the inventory, units of assignment, duty stations, and something of the final disposition.
I’ve sent a request for my airplane to both the National Air and Space Museum and to the Air Force Historical Research Agency. I’m anxious to see what comes back and I’ll share it as soon as I get it.