Part I: Air Force Historians and the Power of History Published Aug. 28, 2024 By Jeremiah D. Foster 377th Air Base Wing History Office KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M -- We are our history—and history has power. Without it, we only react—but with it, we can remember, understand, plan, and often foresee. I am Jeremiah Foster, and I am the historian of the 377th Air Base Wing. Did you know that Kirtland Air Force Base has historians? In fact, the base has a total of seven, one for each of the base’s largest organizations: the 377th Air Base Wing, the 58th Special Operations Wing, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Sandia National Laboratories. And these are just at Kirtland; almost every department and agency in the U.S. government has historians. Okay, so what do these historians do? Historians are keepers of knowledge and interpreters of the past. Generally speaking, historians assigned to military units and organizations are tasked with three key duties: to capture and record contemporary operations, to highlight and connect us to our military heritage, and above all else, to use our knowledge of the past to inform our decisions. How about an example? At my previous assignment, I was the historian for the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming, which is currently at the frontline of helping deploy the Air Force’s next generation of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile—the Sentinel. In the 1980s, the 90th Missile Wing was also the first (and only) wing to deploy the Peacekeeper ICBM, which until Sentinel arrives, will have been the most advanced ICBM the United States ever produced. As the wing historian, I had the opportunity not only to document the beginning of the wing’s venture with Sentinel but also to pull on the history of the Peacekeeper deployment to draw parallels for the challenges that the wing and Sentinel Site Activation Task Force would likely face. This was possible because we had captured that history in the 1980s and the wing had a leadership team that recognized the importance of learning from the past. There tends to be a general conception that the formal study of history exists only in academia, and there is often little awareness of its applications outside of the university system—a field known more broadly as public history. So, what is public history? And what makes it different from any other kind of history? Past and present, history has had many authors. Kings, commoners, statesmen, conquerors, and the conquered have all contributed to the immense body of knowledge we call history. In recent centuries, however, the task of writing history has fallen largely to trained historians—both academic and public. Historian Robert Kelley, author of "Public History: Its Origins, Nature and Prospects," offers the following definition of the discipline: "the employment of historians and the historical method outside of academia: in government, private corporations, the media, historical societies, and museums, even in private practice."[1] Public historians actively engage in preserving and presenting public historical narratives—and in the case of the historian assigned to a military organization, writing official organizational histories. Public history has only relatively recently emerged as a subfield within the history profession; arising in response to the need to employ and account for academically trained historians that were using the historical method in the development of historical narratives created outside of the university system. The formalization of public history into a distinct historical identity and methodology in the United States traces its origins to the 1970s, however, its role in informing the public about history outside of academia has been a part of the social order for centuries. In the U.S., most of the branches of the armed forces only first started formally capturing and writing their own history following the outbreak of the Second World War. Particularly within the U.S. government, historians seek to create a usable past—one that provides guidance for the present and the future—and that is the power of history. Notes [1] Robert Kelley, "Public History: Its Origins, Nature, and Prospects," (The Public Historian, vol. 1. University of California Press, 1978), 16. Want to learn more about public history? Check out Part II of this article: Part II: The Public Historian About the Author: Jeremiah D. Foster is the Historian for the 377th Air Base Wing, the host unit of Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. His primary duties include researching and writing an annual command history report for the wing, advising the wing commander on issues of historical importance, conducting oral history interviews, publishing special studies, providing history and heritage briefings, leading staff rides, and maintaining the wing’s archive and reference library. Mr. Foster is a U.S. Air Force veteran and has previously served as a staff historian for the Air Force Reserve Command History Office and the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command. In addition to numerous publications, he holds several degrees with specialties in North American History, Global History, Public History, and Military History; and is currently a War Studies PhD candidate at King’s College London. Contact Information: 377th Air Base Wing History Office Office Phone: (505) 846-0170 Office Email: 377ABW.HO.Workflow@us.af.mil