My father has given me a set of model merchant ships to sell on ebay, on the outside of the case is stamped Property of A.A.F. Is this from the Army Air Forces? My curiosity has been raised about this item since I have listed it and any information about it would be greatly appreciated.

He paid $1.00 for the set in the 1950's, from the younger brother of a someone enlisted in the navy.

US Army had there own fleet of ships during WWII & Korea..about 100 I think..here is a site about US Army Ships..
The site lists all USA ships..perhaps the box ships were support ships for the USAAF.
 
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-us-cs/army-sh/army-sh.htm.
 
 
Terry T.

These appear to be generic ships, I believe to be used for identification. Here is a list of the ships:

You are correct in labeling them Identification models.  Mostly Navy and AAF, but all branches used them to train men to identify ships silhouettes. There were sets for US warships, merchant ships, Brit ships as above, as well as enemy vessels in the different classes.  They are usually very simple models, showing mostly the features all ships of a certain class had in common, such as 3 main turrets, unique superstructure, funnels, etc...    AAF also had flash cards, film slides, and other training aids to drill into aircrew members how to identify ships to try and avoid friendly fire incidents.  Lots of these sets were sold post-war as "toys".
 
 
 
 

SHAEF1944 American Veterans Museum

Terry T thank you for the link to the website.

SHAEF1944 thank you for the additional information.

Is their any significance to the S/N? Made it's a production number and/or what base it was used?

As far as I know, the s/n's are just for ID of the sets.  US Merchant ship set would have one s/n, no matter what company manufactured the set, US warship set would have another s/n,  Brit merchant ship set another, etc

SHAEF1944 American Veterans Museum