USofficerdocuments.com has separated from Accident-Report.Com
in order to separate the two types of research offered. Accident-Report.Com
began in 1996 when the USAF aircraft accident reports first became available
to the public, but its real story goes back to the early 1970s, when
a teenager became fascinated with his hometown airport and its World
War Two history.
Young Michael Stowe spent every moment he could exploring
the old Millville Army Air Base. The base had been an advanced fighter
training center for P-47 pilots from 1943-1945 and many artifacts from
those days could be found in the woods around the airport. There were
thousands machinegun shells scattered through the woods as well as bombs
and rockets. There were many bottles, broken military dining plates,
worn toothbrushes, empty tooth paste tubes, dogtags, and airplane parts.
He continued his explorations and found many artifacts all through high
school. The artifacts that inspired him the most were parts from airplane
crash sites. These small fragments marked the spot, in many cases, where
pilots had lost their lives. He could not understand how military pilots
were killed near his home and no one remembered them.

Mike was featured in several stories in local newspapers
when he was a senior in high school in 1980.
In the years that followed, Mike learned much more
about his airport. He documented fourteen pilots who had died in aircraft
accidents there and dedicated a small museum to their memory. He also
joined the US military and served 22 years on active and reserve duty
with both the US Army and the US Air Force.

Mike during a military readiness inspection in the
1990s
During his military career, he continued to research
aircraft accidents, but expanded to exploring sites all over New Jersey
and anywhere else his travels took him. He was directly or indirectly
involved in memorials to nearly a hundred military pilots. He also took
every chance he could to tell the story of these men, their bases and
their airplanes. He started a family and
soon realized that he could not continue to invest large amounts on
money into his hobby. He quit for a short time until he met Randy Ferris.
Randy was a machinist from Illinois who wanted to find and restore a
P-47 fighter plane. Mike told him about a wrecked P-47 in a swamp in
North Carolina and accompanied him there to retrieve it. It was Randy
who first suggested the idea of a research service and Mike has continued
the research service since then. He was joined in 2003 by naval aviation
historian Guy Robbins, who manages Accident-Report.Com's USN and USMC
research.

Michael T Stowe and Michael T Stowe Jr at the dedication
of a memorial in Waycross, Georgia in 2007