Maurer Maurer
American military aviation historian (1914–2002)
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Maurer Maurer (1914 – September 22, 2002) was an American military aviation historian and historian in the U.S. Air Force History Program. He edited and compiled official reference works on the United States Army Air Forces and the United States Air Service, including Air Force Combat Units of World War II, Combat Squadrons of the Air Force, World War II, The U.S. Air Service in World War I, and Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919–1939.[1][2][3][4]
Maurer Maurer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1914 Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | September 22, 2002 |
| Occupation | Military historian |
| Spouse | Julia K. Koons |
| Children | 1 |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Miami University Ohio State University |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | History |
Sub-discipline | U.S. Air Force history; military aviation |
| Institutions |
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Maurer's Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919–1939 was reviewed in The American Historical Review and The Public Historian after its publication,[5][6] and later air-power historians have cited it as a key account of interwar U.S. Army aviation.[7][8]
Early life and education
A native of Ohio, Maurer earned a Bachelor of Science from Miami University and both a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University. Before joining the U.S. Air Force Historical Program in 1950, he taught in Ohio public schools and served as a musician in the United States Navy.[9][1]
Career
From 1950 to 1955, Maurer worked in the historical office of the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, simultaneously serving as an adjunct history professor at Wittenberg and Sinclair colleges.[1][9]
In 1955, Maurer transferred to the USAF Historical Division at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, which was successively redesignated the Historical Research Division (1969), the Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center (1972), the USAF Historical Research Center (1983), and the Air Force Historical Research Agency (1991). At Maxwell, Maurer held the academic rank of professor of military history at the Air University and served as assistant to the Air Force Historian, director of research, chief of the center, and senior historian.[1] As Chief of the Historical Studies Branch, he supervised research for Project Ace (1959–1962), part of the Air Force's aerial-victory-credits research program.[10] He retired in 1983.[1]
Maurer's published works originated as official histories produced by the U.S. Air Force's historical program. Maurer edited Air Force Combat Units of World War II, first published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1961 and reprinted by the Office of Air Force History in 1983.[2] Combat Squadrons of the Air Force, World War II, also edited by Maurer (1969, with a 1982 reprint by Zenger Publishing), covers 1,226 tactical squadrons that were active between December 7, 1941, and September 2, 1945, prepared as a companion volume to Air Force Combat Units.[11]
Between 1978 and 1979, Maurer edited The U.S. Air Service in World War I, a four-volume documentary set published jointly by the Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center and the Office of Air Force History, comprising[3] Volume 1, The Final Report and a Tactical History, Volume 2, Early Concepts of Military Aviation, Volume 3, The Battle of St. Mihiel and Volume 4, Postwar Review.
Maurer's monograph Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919–1939 (Office of Air Force History, 1987) addresses the interwar period development of U.S. military aviation between the world wars.[4] The monograph received reviews in The American Historical Review and The Public Historian in 1990,[5][6] and Carnegie Mellon historian Laurence M. Burke later used it as the comparison point for a study of interwar U.S. naval aviation, writing in a 2013 H-Net review that E. R. Johnson's United States Naval Aviation, 1919–1941 "is not the U.S. Navy equivalent of Maurer Maurer's Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919–1939 (1987), in spite of what the back cover might suggest".[7] Phillip S. Meilinger included Maurer's monograph in a 2024 reading list on the interwar U.S. air arm published in Air & Space Forces Magazine.[8]
Maurer also wrote several articles on music in Colonial America and, after retirement, prepared a two-volume history of the Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.[1]
Personal life
Selected works
- Maurer, Maurer, ed. (1983) [1961]. Air Force Combat Units of World War II. Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History. ISBN 0-912799-02-1.
- Maurer, Maurer, ed. (1982) [1969]. Combat Squadrons of the Air Force, World War II. Zenger Publishing. ISBN 0-89201-097-5.
- Maurer, Maurer, ed. (1978–1979). The U.S. Air Service in World War I. Vol. 4 vols. Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center / Office of Air Force History.
- Maurer, Maurer (1987). Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919–1939 (PDF). Office of Air Force History.