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DA Form 2397-2 belongs to the DA series of Department of the Army publications. Its official title is TECHNICAL REPORT OF US ARMY AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT PART III - FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS, and its stated purpose is technical report of us army aircraft accident part iii - findings and recommendations. Edition in force: February 2009. Publication status: not stated. Length is 1 page(s), with roughly 200 fields available for entry.
Proponency for the form rests with OCSA. The governing authority is PAM 385-40, which establishes the circumstances of use and the required routing. Preparation falls to the individual named in the entries or to the unit administrator acting on that individual's behalf; review and signature follow the chain set out in the governing authority.
Formats offered: PDF, XFDL. All are the same published layout in different containers, and the choice between them is a matter of how the entries will be made rather than what appears on the page. The pdf serves as the authoritative rendering. A fillable pdf exposes editable fields on screen; a printable pdf is the blank form as a flat page for handwriting.
Any modern browser or reader will display a pdf. Interactive fields behave more predictably in a standalone reader than in an in-browser viewer, which sometimes shows fields it cannot store. An xfdl copy is published as well. It is IBM Lotus Forms, the format carried by several Army systems, and it needs the Lotus Forms Viewer; pdf readers and word processors will not open it.
All formats are free to download and no registration is involved. The files are the published documents, distributed unmodified.
What the form asks for
- ACFT_NO
- A_ATM
- A_DUTY
- A_MISTAKE
- A_PHASE
- A_REM_A
- A_REM_A_1
- A_REM_A_2
- A_REM_B
- A_REM_B_1
- A_REM_B_2
- A_REM_C
- A_REM_C_1
- A_REM_C_2
- A_ROLE_D
- A_ROLE_S
- A_SYST
- A_SYST_1
- A_SYST_2
- B_ATM
- B_DUTY
- B_MISTAKE
- B_PHASE
- B_REM_A
Completion follows the printed sequence of blocks from the top of the page downward. The heading area takes the identifying particulars — name, identification number, organisation, date of preparation. Retrieval of the record from a file depends on these entries, and they are therefore filled first.
Fillable fields accept typing directly. Tab advances from one field to the next in the order the form was built, which is normally the reading order of the page. Check boxes and option buttons are clicked; where a set of options is exclusive, selecting one clears the rest. Fields sized for a single line will not wrap, and text exceeding the width is truncated in print even where it remains visible on screen. Long entries belong in the remarks area or on a continuation, not compressed into a narrow field.
The signature block is the final entry, made by hand or by an authorised electronic method, and without it the document remains a draft. Countersignatures — review, approval, witness — are added in the sequence printed, dated at the moment of signing and not at preparation. Empty mandatory fields lead the list of defects; an inapplicable field is annotated as such, not passed over. Behind it come digit transposition in identification numbers, day-month inversion in dates, and residual entries surviving from a reused copy in place of a blank form.
Where personal information is gathered, the form carries a Privacy Act statement giving the collection authority, the purpose, the routine uses, and the mandatory or voluntary character of the disclosure. It is read before entries are made rather than afterwards. A completed copy holds personal data and is stored and transmitted under the corresponding safeguards.
Once completed, the form goes where the governing authority directs: to the designated office, along the unit administrative channel, or into the personal file. The preparer retains a copy. The length of retention and the manner of filing are set by the records schedule for the series, not by local arrangement.
Companion forms are traced by series and number. Within the DA series, documents sharing a proponent or a governing directive are frequently required together, and a form cited on the face of another is generally submitted alongside it. Continuation sheets, covers, and transmittal forms are part of that set and are assembled in advance of submission.
An edition stands until the proponent issues a revision. The printed edition date identifies the version, and a copy held locally is checked against the edition now in force before reuse. Prior executions under a superseded edition are not reopened for that reason.
The documents on this page are reproductions of published Department of the Army forms, offered for download. This is an independent site with no connection to the Department of the Army and no authority to issue forms. Nothing stated is legal advice, and no assurance is given regarding acceptance by any office. Doubts about a specific entry, requirement, or eligibility are resolved by the proponent or by the servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 2397-2?
- TECHNICAL REPORT OF US ARMY AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT PART III - FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
- Which edition is current?
- February 2009
- Who is responsible for this form?
- OCSA
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL