Also note that Chappell is wearing civilian clothes - a common wool overcoat, basic tie, and standard shirt, common to European men of poorer or median financial backgrounds. Note that the photograph has a square white box around Chappell’s face, where a knife could be used. You could take a pocket knife to cut the photograph to the needed size of the identification housing. The shape and size of the photographs is exactly the type needed to fit in most standard-sized identification cards, papers, or passports of the 1940s era. Chappell’s photograph were to be used in for false passports or identification cards if he were to crash or be shot down in Europe. The photographs were part of a downed pilot’s survival kit, to be used in the case of an American pilot crashing in enemy territory during World War II. Chappell of Elizabeth City, N.C., with cropped squares around Chappell’s face printed on the photographic print. These particular 6 photographs had written on the back of the set “ Escape pictures.” The identifications would be used for the airmen to avoid detection by German authorities, and help them be able to cross borders without being caught and sent to prisoner of war camps. The portrait photographs were to be used by downed AAF airmen if they needed to have false passports or identification cards created to use in specific European countries. There are 6 such photographs, printed on a unique size of photographic paper - shaped similarly to a small, early 1900s tobacco pack baseball card.
#AAF RECOVERY TOOL AV700 SERIES#
The most unique item, which frequently does not remain in such downed pilot’s kits, are a series of identical, small portrait photographs of Chappell. He was able to make it back to England, where his unit was based out of in order to be able to fly bombing missions over Germany and German-held areas.Ī double-sided list with English to French, English to Spanish, English to German, and English to Italian phrases that were basic to the needs of downed airmen. He would have continued on more missions, if he had not been injured during a bombing mission sometime around March 1944.
His service proves that the rule on number of missions airmen were supposed to fly before rotation was not always followed: Chappell flew 26 missions between September 1943 and March 1944. Chappell of Elizabeth City, N.C., served in the European Theater as a co-pilot on the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress named “Lucky Strike” in the 532nd Bomb Squadron, 381st Bomb Group, 8th Air Force. A lot of AAF men never made it to 25 missions. Due to different approaches in managing aviation crews, some AAF numbered air forces rotated their crews after 25 bombing missions (though, this was not a hard or fast rule). If you were an AAF pilot in Europe having flown more than 20 missions, the likelihood that you would live much longer flying without being shot down behind enemy lines was thin. It wasn’t given to American flyers for if you were shot down or crashed - it was given for when you got shot down or crashed.
Army Air Forces (AAF) aviators in the European and Pacific Theaters were given what we refer to as a downed pilot or aviator’s survival kit. What would you do if you were in a plane shot down over enemy territory in time of war? How would you survive? How would you communicate in what is likely a non-English speaking area? How would you find food, cross guarded borders, and escape to your own side? Would you even know where to begin or what you would need? We’re talking Jason Bourne-type of survival here, folks!ĭuring World War II, U.S. Peek, Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina
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