[Frank Olynyk]

Footnote/Fold3 did a very poor job of digitizing the MACRs. I have been told that it was outsourced to India. Whether this was the scanning/digitization, or just the index of names, serials and MACR numbers I do not know.
I found numerous cases where 3 MACRs in a row cannot be located by reference to the MACR number; for example 453 to 455, and 1470 to 1472, and 1520 to 1522. Since in general when NARA put the MACRs on microfiche they put only three MACRs on a fiche (regardless of how many would fit), missing three in a row means that an entire fiche did not get processed. I have complained about this to them, but the missing MACRs never reappear in their collection.

Starting with MACR 3479, and going all the way to 3724 none of the MACRs can be located by report number. I have no idea what they managed to do here.

A major mistake in building the database of images was that they did not use the MACR number as the primary key (to be technical). They used the aircraft serial. The problem with this is that some MACRs do not have an aircraft serial explicitly (although I have found some elsewhere in the MACR images). The other problem is that some aircraft serials have two MACRs associated with them. This happens when the first MACR covers crewmen who bailed out during the flight, but the pilot was able to fly the aircraft back to base. And then the aircraft was lost on a subsequent mission. Both the missing aircraft serial MACRs, and the duplicate aircraft serials violate the rules for building a relational database.

All of the MACRs that exist are held in the original at NARA II in College Park, Maryland. They also have a complete set of the MACR microfiches available to researchers. The original paper copies can only be accessed by researchers if it can be shown that the fiche is unreadable, or has some other defect. Which I have had to do at times.

There are no original MACRs held by USAF Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB. They have only a set of the microfiches, as well as a set of the 16mm microfilms of the index cards prepared from the MACRs. The microfilms are frequently unreadable, and incomplete. They are also available at NARA II.

As far as I am aware MACRs were prepared in the field at the Squadron or Group level, and then sent up the line to the Wing and then Air Force. They were then sent to Washington, where the MACR number was assigned to the report. MACRs are not normally found in the Squadron or Group records, either at NARA II or USAFHRA. There are also numerous cases where MACRs were not prepared in a timely fashion, and only exist because of a family request for more details, when it was found that a MACR had not been prepared. MACRs can also be found in an IDPF, but I do not believe I have ever found a MACR in an IDPF that was not also in the MACR collection at NARA II, and on microfiche.

Enjoy!

Frank.