About this archive
A research archive begun in September 2026 by Kevin Reinhardt, grandson of Lt. Thomas M. F. Reinhardt, navigator on the Don C. Wood crew of the 817th. It began as one man's story and grew into a record of the whole group, built so that every family can find their man and add what they know. It is a KR Maps side project, free, and sells nothing.
Where the records come from
| Record | Source | What it gives |
|---|---|---|
| 215 missions | 483rd BG Association mission summary (15thaf.org), checked against the 15th Air Force daily chronology | date and target of every mission; one printed date corrected (mission 63) |
| 69 Missing Air Crew Reports | National Archives Catalog, RG 92, microfilm M1380 | crew of each lost aircraft, how it was lost, eyewitness statements, casualty questionnaires, German capture reports |
| Loss sheets | Charles Morgan's aircraft pages on the Association site | the Association's account of each loss, keyed to the mission number |
| 293 aircraft | Association pages, American Air Museum, b17flyingfortress.de, Dave Osborne's B-17 Master Log | nicknames, squadrons, assignment dates, fates |
| 6,598 award orders | Army Air Corps Library and Museum, 483bg.org | Air Medals, clusters, Distinguished Flying Crosses and more, with date and rank at the time |
| Morning reports, Sep 1943 to Dec 1944 | National Archives Catalog, RG 64 (1945 not yet digitised) | arrivals, promotions, hospital, rest camp, departures, by squadron |
| Crews | Heroes of the 483rd (Grimm and Cole, 1997) and the Association rosters | who flew with whom, positions, hometowns |
| Photographs | National Archives, the 1945 unit history, San Diego Air and Space Museum via Wikimedia Commons; by link, the Association pages, newsletters and the American Air Museum | aircraft, crews, strike photographs, base life |
| Newsletters 2017 to 2023 | 483rd BG Association | mentions of men, TAPS death notices |
How the records were joined
Each source was parsed by its own script and kept as a table. Men were joined on surname and given name within the same unit; a same-named man in another squadron stays a separate record. Morning-report entries carry only a surname and an Army serial number, so they attach by serial where a report gives it, otherwise by a surname unique within the unit, and never to a man who already carries a different serial. Spelling variants one letter apart are flagged as possible duplicates rather than merged. The register therefore errs towards too many records; families collapse them.
What to distrust
Anything read by machine from microfilm: the morning-report sentences, the names in the loss reports, the newsletter text. The flags on each record say where the sources disagreed or the reading was uncertain. The 1945 morning reports are not online. Thirty of fifty newsletters are page scans without text. Photographs are indexed by caption, so a man appears under a photograph only when his name was written down with it.
Rights
National Archives records are public domain and are shown. Material from the Association's site and newsletters, from Heroes of the 483rd, from the museums and from b17flyingfortress.de is credited to them and is not copied here: photographs on those sites are shown by link, newsletters are quoted briefly with credit, and the book's crew histories are referred to by page only. Contact details printed in newsletters are removed from quotations. Photographs contributed by families belong to those families and are shown only under the permission they chose. If something here is yours and should not be, say so and it comes down.
Credits
The 483rd Bombardment Group Association and its website at 15thaf.org; Charles Morgan; Jacob L. Grimm and Verne H. Cole; the Army Air Corps Library and Museum; the American Air Museum in Britain (Imperial War Museums); the San Diego Air and Space Museum; Dave Osborne; b17flyingfortress.de; the National Archives and Records Administration; the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.