THIS SITE IS ABOUT AN OLD, HANDWRITTEN,
LEATHERBOUND AIRFIELD REGISTER.
THIS IS MORE THAN A WEB SITE:
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 and passengers,
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 and learn from, 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 WEB SITE 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 Web site
visitors.
Share findings and texts derived from and inspired by analyses
of the Microsoft Access database of Register entries, available
as downloads from this Web site.
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 information and images 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 Web site as a research tool and resource for
investigators of Golden Age aviation history.
WHAT YOU SEE
IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF WHAT YOU GET FROM THIS SITE
This Web site presents full-size, color
images of the 218 register pages (REGISTER button, upper right). 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. The information, photographs, documents and links can be at once riveting, poignant, outrageous, funny and instructive to aviators and non-aviators alike.
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? Through the PEOPLE button above right, this Web site
will guide you to their signatures and their lives, and help
you get acquainted with them. Likewise for their AIRPLANES, the PLACES they went, and the flying EVENTS that challenged them.
Said another way, the buttons in the upper right corner of any page are your entry points for exploring the entire history spawned by the Register of the Davis- Monthan Municipal Airfield.
---o0o---
PLEASE NOTE: The original Davis-Monthan Municipal Airfield,
where the Register lived for a decade, and which is the subject
of this Web site, is in no way related, except in name and
approximate geolocation, to the functions or 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 6,000 and 8,000
visits per month as of the revision date below.
UPLOADED: 05/04/05 REVISED:
02/14/06, 04/01/06, 04/04/07, 09/25/07, 11/07/07, 03/06/08, 12/30/08, 05/09/09
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