Preserving Aviation History – One Image at a Time
By Jerri Bergen
Many American Aviation Historical Society members gained their aviation passion at a young age, reading XXXXX comics, collecting AirTrails magazines and building balsa Comet models. Young enthusiasts of the 1940s and 1950s could bicycle to nearby airfields or manufacturing plants and watch as new, innovative aircraft roared by, demonstrating new technologies that were pushing performance envelopes.
The aviation industry, quickly transitioning to the broader aerospace industry of the 1950s and ’60s created two generations of workers that designed, built and supported the operations of amazing new technologies that were propelling the world to new heights. Many aerospace employees spent their leisure time photographing both new and vintage aircraft, then easily accessible on airfields around the country.
It was these enthusiasts that in 1956 formalized the American Aviation Historical Society, in the same few years that saw other iconic grass-roots aviation organizations develop; the Antique Aircraft Association (1953) and the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), (1954) dedicated to supporting and promoting the field of aviation.
AAHS’ mission then, and today, continues to be the preservation and promotion of American aviation history, in photographs, and histories, documented in the AAHS Journal, published continuously since 1956. AAHS members worked to build a photo archive of aircraft and aviation topics of all kinds, used for swapping among members like baseball cards, and to support the histories documented in the Journal.
The articles of the Journal (penned by AAHS members) cover such varied aviation topics such as ‘High Flying Fashion! The Evolution of Flight Apparel for Pioneering Women Pilots, by Barbara Schultz, (Vol 64, No 4, Winter 2019), Air Force Bases 1947-1987 by Mark L. Morgan (Volume #32, 1987) and The Pacific International Air Races of 1939, by Jay Wright (Volume 10, 1965), accompanied by photos from the ever growing AAHS photo archives.
Photos submitted or donated from member collections are in a huge variety of formats, original glassine slides with silver XXXX coatings in brown wooden boxes, crinkled browned 3×4” black and white photos tacked to scrapbooks, 4×6 black and white prints, glossy 8×10 prints, 35mm slides by the thousands, and all the accompanying negatives, as well as a staggering number of digital files, in the last 25 years.
Since the mid 1990s, AAHS has slowly been digitizing negatives, adding them to a catalog available to members on the AAHS website (www.aahs-online.org). The pace of image donations has increased dramatically in the last ten years, far outstripping the speed at which digital images become available on the website. While 20-80,000 images can be processed in a year, depending on volunteer hours available, the AAHS photo collection has grown by over 700,000 images in the last three years alone.
The digitization requires scanning the original print (or negative) image, and documenting in the database information about the subject of the photo (aircraft type, location, etc).
To help overcome this issue, AAHS webmaster Hayden Hamilton developed a web-based application “PLANESPOTTER” (www.PLANESPOTTER.COM) that allows scanned images to be downloaded by enthusiasts, who can fill in fields to help identify the aircraft type, location, serial number etc, and submit their findings to the AAHS database for quality check and approved updates.
PLANESPOTTER is similar to web based photo identification applications used by many aerospace museums today to help identify photos, like the San Diego Air and Space museum’s FLICKER COMMONS application.
PLANESPOTTER differs from the FLICKER COMMONS however, in that each participant is provided with a ‘personal collection’ of photos to identify and document that are tailored to specific interests or knowledge levels. Have a keen interest in jets? The collection downloaded for your review and identification could be just civil jets built after 1972, for example. Not familiar with aircraft but want to help anyway? Many thousands of images have handwritten data visible in the image that can be transcribed without particular aviation knowledge.
Currently PLANESPOTTER is in rigorous testing with AAHS members around the world who have helped iron out bugs and improve the process, such as identifying effective internet resources to help aid in researching aircraft markings. AAHS is nearing the point when we can quickly work with remote volunteers, via email and the internet to get unique photo collections to those who can help identify them.
With much of our aviation pursuits curtailed this year due to the COVID pandemic, this could be your opportunity to help add to the growing base of documented aviation history. AAHS is looking to get your help and support. Contact AAHS via email at PLANESPOTTER@aahs-online.org; we’d look forward to hearing from you!
