Air Force Museum
Tools of the Trade
USAAF airmen were supplied with many tools to help them evade the enemy if they were downed or to escape from POW camps if they were captured. In addition to these, ingenious POWs made their own from material at hand.
In depth
History & service
Evasion purses were issued to aircrews before they flew over enemy territory. Custom-made for specific areas, they contained escape maps, compasses, local currency and escape saws.
While flying missions over Europe, USAAF airmen carried photographs of themselves in civilian clothes.
These aids helped downed airmen communicate with local inhabitants. Airmen pointed to the words and phrases and followed instructions on pronunciation contained in a "pointie talkie" or on a phrase card.
Some POWs fashioned ingenious escape tools from everyday items found in the camps.
Officially made escape maps have changed several times over the years, and the earliest maps were made of paper or tissue. During World War II, the most common types were silk or rayon.
Blood chits are documents that offer rewards to anyone who provides assistance to a downed flier. They also identify a flier's nationality and carry messages in several languages that request aid. Each blood chit is individually numbered to identify specific pilots.
The first blood chits were used by British pilots in colonial police actions as early as 1917. The first Americans to carry blood chits served in the 14th Volunteer Bombardment Squadron in China during 1937-1938, while the best known blood chits were those used by the American Volunteer Group (or "Flying Tigers") in China during 1941-1942.
Aircraft change the battlefield
In the First World War, aircraft became valuable because they could see beyond the front line. Reconnaissance and artillery observation affected decisions on the ground. Once that information mattered, opposing forces had reason to attack the aircraft gathering it. Fighters, defensive armament, and increasingly specialized missions developed around this contest over observation and freedom of movement.
The aircraft were fragile by later standards, but their crews worked inside a rapidly expanding military system. Training, maintenance, replacement aircraft, photography, communications, and weather reporting supported each sortie. Improvements in engines and armament changed tactics, while the pressures of combat exposed weaknesses that might have taken much longer to discover in peacetime.
Personal stories should be read alongside those systems. A uniform or a named aircraft connects the war to an individual, but the individual depended on many others and operated under constraints that skill could not eliminate. Aircraft from opposing sides show how designers answered similar problems in different ways. The later military collections in Dayton and at Udvar-Hazy reveal what endured: the need to gather information, protect friendly forces, move people and supplies, and coordinate action across distance. The scale changed enormously; the relationship between an aircraft's design and the job it had to perform remained fundamental.
