Following WWI, the United States commemorated November 11th as Armistice Day. The date was significant since WWI fighting ended on November 11, 1918 (the 11th hour, 11th month, 11th day). However, in 1947, a WWII veteran from Birmingham, Alabama, was the driving force in his community to organize this country’s first Veterans Day celebration. Raymond Weeks believed that all veterans should be recognized – not only those who perished, as was the case for Memorial Day. The idea took root, and eventually, in 1954, Congress passed a bill designating November 11th as Veterans Day. This Veterans Day ..read more

On November 11, 1921, President Warren G. Harding presided over the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. The monument honored fallen U.S. servicemen from WWI whose remains were unidentified. The ceremony took place the same day the country was celebrating the newly declared Armistice Day holiday. During WWI, the chaos of battle resulted in scores of unidentified dead servicemen. The creation of the memorial, also known as the Tomb of the Unknowns, was proposed in 1920 by New York Congressman and WWI veteran Hamilton Fish. Both Great B ..read more

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is an agency within the United States Department of Defense. Their mission is to recover the remains of military personnel who are listed as prisoners of war or missing in action from past conflicts. We’ve added a new collection of indexed records for the estimated 82,000 American military and civilian personnel still missing in action. The index covers multiple conflicts including WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and more recent conflicts including Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The DPAA collection is divide ..read more

Phan Rang Air Base was an important United States Air Force base during the Vietnam War. It is located in the Ninh Thuan Province of Vietnam. Originally built by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII, it was rebuilt by the United States Air Force and used during the Vietnam War by both the USAF and the South Vietnamese Air Force. As part of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, the base was turned over to South Vietnam. In April 1975, the People’s Army of Vietnam seized the base, and today it is used by the Vietnam People’s Air Force. We’ve recently added historical records from Phan Rang (also c ..read more

We’ve recently completed a publication that contains nearly 11 million records of U.S. Veterans gravesites that date back to the Revolutionary War. The U.S. Veterans’ Gravesites, ca. 1775-2019 collection compiles records from a variety of sources and cemeteries for soldiers and their dependents who were buried in Veterans Affairs (VA) National Cemeteries, state veterans’ cemeteries, or other military cemeteries. Because we’ve cross-referenced multiple sources for this collection, the amount of information on each record varies. Some of the things you might learn from these records include: Na ..read more

Have you ever heard of the Combat Artists Program? In June 1966, the Army created the Vietnam Combat Artists Program. Soldier-artists in this program often reached for paints and canvas instead of weapons. They documented the war using a variety of mediums and created works of art that inspired and provided a visual interpretation of life during wartime. The idea of using art to invoke emotion during battle was not new. Artists and photographers have created images dating back to the Revolutionary War. Photographer Mathew Brady captured scenes during the Civil War that are still viewed regular ..read more

Hill Air Force Base in Utah can trace its history back to 1934 when the US Army experimented with the idea of using Air Corps pilots to deliver airmail. Military officials identified a site just south of the inactive Ogden Ordnance Depot in Utah, as a good place to locate a base and appropriated funds for the construction of the Ogden Air Depot. A short time later the name was changed to Hill Field in honor of Maj. Ployer P. Hill, who died while test-flying a prototype for the B-17 Flying Fortress. In 1948, Hill Field was renamed Hill Air Force Base. Hell’s Angels Our new Hill AFB collection c ..read more

On August 3, 1966, the US launched a six-month offensive known as Operation Prairie in Vietnam. The operation consisted of a series of battles primarily in the Con Thien and Gio Linh regions along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separated North and South Vietnam. The objective of the US was to prevent the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) from crossing the DMZ and invading the Quang Tri Province. The operation came on the heels of Operation Hastings, a previous operation that lasted from mid-July to early August along the DMZ and was deemed a strategic success. During 1965 and early 1966, the Viet ..read more