1945 Map of Army Air Forces Fair in Dayton, Ohio - promoting the future of Warfare

This is a 1945 United States Army Air Forces map of the Army Air Forces Fair at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, today's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Army officials called the fair 'the largest spectacle of its kind ever staged anywhere,' where many many previously classified aircrafts and other projects were presented. A flying display of a radio-controlled airplane used near the end of the war as target practice for anti-aircraft gunners and machine gunners on B-29s made headlines throughout the country. Seven Nazi rocket- and jet-propelled airplanes, one of which was captured shortly before the end of World War II, were publicly displayed for the first time.

Presented by the Air Technical Service Command, the fair was intended to argue for continued research and development funding to create the 'push-button' war of tomorrow. After visiting the fair, Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, who led the famed Doolittle Raid over Tokyo in 1942, stated, 'The experimental and developmental research in aeronautics shown in this mighty exhibit tells more vividly than any other one thing why such must be continued through the years ahead. We have the necessary funds to see such program[s] through.'

Publication History and Census

This map was created for distribution at the Army Air Forces Fair in Dayton, Ohio, in October 1945. This is the only known surviving example.