The Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register

OWN A TIME MACHINE

Your copy of the Davis-Monthan Airfield Register with all the pilots' signatures and helpful cross-references to pilots and airplanes is available here.

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PRESS COVERAGE AND OTHER ITEMS RELATED TO WWW.DMAIRFIELD

Occasional press coverage of this site and other project activities is listed here.

WHAT YOU SEE IS NO WHERE NEAR WHAT YOU GET FROM THIS SITE

This website presents full-size, color images of the 218 register pages. Each of the names, airplanes, places and events , written in the Register so long ago by transient pilots and passengers at the Davis-Monthan Airfield, is addressed. Why?

So you may see and learn for yourself, supplemented by texts, databased information and hyperlinks, the breadth and depth of the impact the signers of the register made on 20th century aviation.

Pilots who signed over 70 years ago, military and civilian, male and female, comprise a "Who's Who" of famous aviators. Charles Lindbergh logged in. As did Amelia Earhart, Phoebe Omlie, Jack Frye, Jimmie Angel and Bobbi Trout. And a large number of not-so-famous, workaday pilots passed through: early transport pilots like Hap Russell and Lee Willey, and C.N. Shelton. And businessmen like Dudley Steele and Billy Parker. Don't know who some of these people are? This website will guide you to their signatures and their lives, and help you understand.

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Some mages and brief quotations on this site are used under the fair use provision of the U.S. Copyright Act for purposes of comment, criticism, and historical reporting. Hyperlinks are used wherever possible to link to others' more extensive original information.
Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register
Ed SchleePancho BarnesBill Piper Jr. rightFrank HawksBobbi Trout
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THIS SITE IS ABOUT AN OLD, HANDWRITTEN, LEATHERBOUND AIRFIELD REGISTER.
THIS IS MORE THAN A WEBSITE: IT IS A TIME MACHINE!
IF YOU'RE A FAN OF AVIATION, SIT UP STRAIGHT. THIS IS THE MACHINE FOR YOU.

Despite its battered surface appearance, when you open it the Register is a STUNNING artifact of early 20th century American techno-cultural behavior (roll your cursor over the register thumbnail, above, left).

The Register was signed by many hundreds of transient pilots, including those pictured in the thumbnails above, who visited the Davis-Monthan Municipal Airfield in Tucson, Arizona. They landed and wrote their names between February 6, 1925 and November 26, 1936. Get a quick look at the Register by clicking THE REGISTER, above right. Then explore the Register's PEOPLE, PLACES, AIRPLANES and EVENTS in more detail by clicking those buttons and submenus.

From the Register stems all manner and direction of United States aeronautical development. The people, aircraft, places and events recorded there, and now available for you to see, helped spawn the intellectual and physical infrastructures of global aviation technologies, in peace and in war, during the 20th century. It is not an overstatement to say they formed the ideas, performed the actions, and served as loci from which, in many significant ways, we enter our second century of powered flight.

The GOALS OF THIS WEBSITE are to:

Share with the global public the historically significant Register of the Davis-Monthan Municipal Airfield.

Post images of the 218 register pages, and post the Microsoft Access database I made of the Register in downloadable form, such that it enables off-line queries and analyses by website visitors.

Share findings and texts derived from and inspired by analyses of the Microsoft Access database of Register entries, available as downloads from this website.

Solicit and incorporate analyses performed by users of this site in order to make the site's data and knowledge bases open-source and "evergreen". YOU are encouraged to contribute to the content and logical development of this site. You may send the results of your analyses and findings via the CONTACT US button on each web page.

Solicit and incorporate testimonies from users of this site regarding what they know and learn about the pilots, airplanes, events and places cited in the Register and in the database. A special FORM is made available for you to do this.

Develop this website as a research tool and resource for investigators of Golden Age aviation history.

PLEASE NOTE: The original Davis-Monthan Municipal Airfield, where the Register lived for a decade and which is the subject of this website, is in no way related, except in name and approximate geolocation, to the operations of the present-day Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Click on this link for a brief summary of the history and geography of the airfield.

This site was opened to the global public on May 4, 2005.

 

NOTE: This counter tallies visitors to this home page only. Visitors who enter the site through links directed at other than the home page add many, many more hits than are shown on this counter. Actual traffic is between 4,000 and 6,000 hits per month as of the revision date below.

2006 Wolf Aviation Fund Grant

UPLOADED: 05/04/05 REVISED: 02/14/06, 04/01/06, 04/04/07, 09/25/07, 11/07/07, 03/06/08
 
Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register Home
The Register
People
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Louise Thaden, 1929 Air Derby

WHERE DOES THE REGISTER LIVE?

The original register is preserved at the Operations Office of the present Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A..

WHAT IS THE REGISTER?

The Register is a folio-sized, 218-page book. It is the only existing air traffic log for the original Davis-Monthan Municipal Airfield, founded in 1919.

WHY IS THE REGISTER IMPORTANT?

It records, in pilots' and passengers' own handwriting, their flight activities in and out of the Airfield for more than a decade during "The Golden Age of Aviation". Click for a monthly PDF calendar that covers this decade, 1925-1936.

At Tucson during this time, the forces of history, geography and time melded with the makers and actors of early aviation, and their marks in the log call on us to pay tribute to their presence and to their deeds.

The link below gets you an uncopyrighted, 149-page Davis-Monthan Airfield history in PDF format. Excellent reading!

History of Davis-Monthan Airfield

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The Privacy Policy has been edited specifically to protect prospective donors to Delta Mike Airfield, Inc.

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This web site includes history, analysis and commentary about the Golden Age of Aviation, which comprises roughly 1920-1940. It includes accounts summarized from personal anecdotes, news media and other publications of the era.

Some of these contain references to race and gender that are clearly racist and sexist when interpreted according to 21st century social values. These references are not reinterpreted or edited for contemporary readers. Rather, they are reported as is with the understanding that your Webmaster has no intention whatsoever of demeaning or attaching any differential value to any race, gender, creed or belief.

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