My grandfather enlisted in the Army Air Corps in the late 30s, and then he spent most of the War in the South Pacific as a nav and pilot on 17s and as an IP on 29s in Mississippi (to the best of my knowledge). Well, he died in 2003 and left all his medals and ribbons to me. However, my grandmother (his wife), just passed away last week, finally putting me in possession of said medals and ribbons. My question is: how do I found out what each one is for? He stayed in the service for years and years as a reservist after the War ended, so I can't figure out which decorations belong to which time period. I'm assuming there's a website out there that would have all of these things itemized, but sometimes I suck at the Google. If I can find my camera, I'll take some photos and post them. Thanks for the help.

Mods: I assume this has been discussed elsewhere, but I couldn't get anything to come up using the SF.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards_and_decorations_of_the_United_States_military?wasRedirected=true

Try that link to see if it helps. There are also some books on amazon you can order as well. I am in the same boat as you right now but found what my grandfather's ribbons were since they are still awarded. You can also scan them and ask VFW or American Legion folks what they are.

Clothing sales has a huge poster usally displayed with every medal from WW2 to present with proper order of importance.

Write to the Military Records archiveand see what you would need to provide to try and get a copy of his record. Probably would be interesting to see if they still have it.

Thanks for all the help, gents. I'll boogie down to MCSS to see if they've got a poster up. Cruising over to the VFW and American Legion is a really good idea, too. I didn't know I'd be able to get a copy of his DD214; I'll see what comes up on the MRA website.

Just through perusing the interweb, I figured out that two of the sets of wings he had were for Navs and Observers. Unfortunately, I couldn't find his pilot wings. He's also got a medal that looks pretty similar to an iron cross. I'm curious to find out what that is. Lastly, he's got a tiny medal that was given to folks that worked on the Manhattan Project; I think that was from his father-in-law. Pretty interesting stuff.