Long, Thomas B. Papers

Captain, United States Air Force.

The papers of Thomas B. Long include correspondence, printed materials, military records, and other items concerning his career in the U.S. Air Force and his service in the Korean War.

Size: Less than one linear foot (about 1,000 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Documents created by U.S. Government officials in the course of their duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of the documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: SonJanita Jordan (2026).

Thomas Brevard Long was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, on May 17, 1922. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943 and served as a navigator in the European Theater, during World War II; Long rose to the rank of Captain and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.

After the war, he completed his education at the University of Texas and established a law practice in Austin, Texas, in 1948. He was recalled to active service during the Korean War in 1950, serving in the Philippines as a Captain with air-sea and land-rescue teams, as well as working as squadron navigator and defense counsel in court-martial cases.

Following his military service, he returned to his law practice in Austin in 1952. Thomas B. Long passed away in Austin, Texas, on October 25, 1989.

The Thomas B. Long Papers include personal letters, mission reports, printed materials, military records, and other items relating to his service in the Korean War. They are arranged alphabetically in a single series, the Subject File.

The correspondence includes letters from Long to his wife and family, both handwritten originals and transcribed copies. The reports include information about a rescue training mission in Leyte in which Long participated in 1951. Among the printed materials is a newspaper obituary published after Long’s death. The papers also include personnel records concerning Long’s military service, memoirs of his trips home and other activities, maps, comic skits that Long prepared for the entertainment of his fellow servicemen, records from a court-martial in which Long was involved as an attorney for the defense, and a scrapbook containing Long’s account of his service during the Korean War, with related documents and photographs.

Photographs from the papers have been transferred to the Truman Library’s audiovisual collection. They include images from Long’s wartime service and trips he made in later years to revisit the bases on which he had served.

The Federal Power Commission Subject File consists of correspondence, legislative bills, memorandums, newspaper clippings, printed materials, and reports related to Dale Doty’s work with gas, power, and water resources as a member of the Federal Power Commission.

The Harry S. Truman Library Institute acquired this collection from the Korean War National Museum in Springfield, Illinois, which closed in 2017, and subsequently donated it to the Truman Library, Accession numbers from the Korean War National Museum remain on the items.

Related collections at the Truman Library include the Records of the Korean War National Museum and the papers of Holden Johnson.