George E. Adams Jr. World War II Collection

The George E. Adams Jr. World War II Collection is comprised of materials related to the military service of Second Lieutenant George E. Adams, Jr. Adams was a member of the 30th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron (Ninth Air Force) during World War II, and this collection documents his training and active service in the war.

Series I, Manuscripts, includes military personnel documents, correspondence between Adams and his family, maps, and a log book. The log book covers his flight training only; none of his flights in Europe are recorded in the log. Also included are a yearbook for one of Adams' training classes and a newspaper clipping from his hometown newspaper.

Series II, Photographs, consists of sixty-five (65) photographs, most of which are aerial photographs of Western Europe. There is also a small number of images showing men in the 30th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron enjoying leisure time and some formal group portraits of the pilots. It appears that the photographs in Folders 6 and 7 may have at one time been stored in the "30th in the ETO" folder in Folder 8, and that they served as a sort of scrapbook of the 30th's activities in the European Theater.

There are an additional one hundred seventy-five (175) aerial photographs of Western Europe, taken in 1944-1945. Some of the images are reconnaissance images, while others are records of the damage inflicted by Allied bombing. The images are from all of the major operations that the 30th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron participated in, including reconnaissance photographs of the D-Day invasion beaches and a series of photographs documenting bridges and dams on the Rhine and Roer Rivers in Germany.

Also included among the documents in Folder 4 is one archival item from Brigadier General Bruce A. Adams (United States Army, 1969-1998), one of Adams' sons. In addition, several items in the objects component of the collection belonged to George E. Adams, Sr., who served in the United States Army infantry during World War I.

Digitized Materials: A selection of textual materials and most of the photographic items have been digitized from this collection.

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