I am looking for info about Heraclio Alafro. He was working in aviation engineering from 1922 to 1945 in Cleveland and Boston. He was teaching and learneing at MIT. He patented more than 25 invents of aviation

Good Morning Mr. Sagastuy:

The National Archives at Boston has a large collection of material related to the radar Development Laboratory during World War II. Please email our reference staff at boston.archives@nara.gov and we will see what we can find in the collection.

Mr. Sagastuy:

There should be files for Mr. Alfaro’s US patents at our regional archives in Kansas City, Missouri. You can write to them at kansascity.archives@nara.gov  They will need to know the patent numbers assigned to the patents. You can find those by searching the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Database at http://patft.uspto.gov/

You can find general descriptions of War Manpower Commission (WMC) records at the National Archives online at https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/211.html  and https://catalog.archives.gov/id/538. 

Finding anything is limited at the moment since we have no idea what Mr. Alfaro did during his time with the WMC. Since he spent time in both Massachusetts and Ohio, he may have worked in the regional office in one or both places. Those WMC records have been regionalized, with the Massachusetts records in our regional archives in Boston, Massachusetts (https://www.archives.gov/boston), and with the Ohio records in our regional archives in Chicago, Illinois (https://www.archives.gov/chicago).

There is a file for Mr. Alfaro in Vannevar Bush’s papers at the Library of Congress, Please see  https://www.loc.gov/item/mm78014498/  for more information about those records. The file for Mr. Alfaro is in box 2 of Mr. Bush’s General Correspondence, 1936-1955. Mr. Bush was also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during Mr. Alfaro’s time there, so they may have known of each other already. These records may give further clues on Mr. Alfaro’s work for the US government, as Mr. Bush held positions with the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), National Defense Research Council (NDRC), and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Given Mr. Alfaro’s background in aviation, any of these may have been a good fit. If you do find more about his government service, you can always make additional inquiries with the National Archives by emailing archives1reference@nara.gov.

Good luck with your research!

Compiled by Eugene Morris