Hello,
In response to a number of requests from readers of this board, I'm taking this opportunity to provide a comprehensive update on the status of the "Eagles over Europe" Project.
This past 18-months or so have been very challenging for me. I've survived a major crises as a result of being diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer on one of my salivary glands, which was life-threatening. This resulted in full regime of surgery, radiation and chemo treatments which have resulted in being recently given a clean bill of health from my doctors. I've also implemented a strict weight loss and exercise program that combined with beating the cancer, I feel have prospectively added another 15-20 years to my life that I otherwise wouldn't have had. My family has also had to recently deal with the tragic loss of my mother to cancer, cleaning out the family home, getting it onto the market, and moving my 88-year old dad to an assisted living facility near my home.
During the past several years, my primary focus has had to be on bringing a number of long-pending WW II Southwest Pacific American bomber unit histories to completion. During the past three years, two of them have been published, and three more, comprising four volumes, are very close to publication. Although not Luftwaffe related, these can be reviewed, if interested, at
http://www.airwar-worldwar2.com/, the website for my company, International Historical Research Associates.
Now on to an update of the EOE Project. A project of the magnitude and scope of the EOE Project has a long lead time to acquire the information and photography, while moving forward with planning and executing the maps and artwork. No final decisions have been made for the authorship of the various volumes, but a number of top researchers and historians are likely to be involved as authors, co-authors and associate authors on the various projects once the necessary research has been completed. It is obvious to me that none of the seven primary volumes will have a single author. While I have been busy dealing with the projects and problems related above, the EOE Working Group, which numbers about 40 people at present in 13 countries, has focused their efforts in the following eight main areas:
a) Creating a massive all-source data base (DB) of every Axis and Allied a/c loss or damage and crew casualty for the entire project period, excluding only training losses. Peter Cornwell, one of our WG members, has now completed our comprehensive Luftwaffe loss DB which contains many thousands of entries, with a major effort made to assess causes of loss, damage or casualty, and attribute these to specific combat events and pilots on the other side. Readers of this forum will be well familiar with Peter's work, as he has generously shared many items from this revised DB in answer to questions here. Most of you are probably also familiar with his previously published work for the "After the Battle" publisher on this subject. Peter's revised and updated EOE DB now takes all this previously published material, re-evalutates it, fills in all the gaps, including air ops over Germany, and updates all of his previous work on the subject from every possible source available. There is still a great need to pinpoint the exact crash sites for many Luftwaffe losses during the Western Campaign of May-June, 1940, and this is probably the area where the greatest amount of work can still be done, much of it through aviation archaeology that is ongoing in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Photography is also making important contributions to this effort.
We've also completed a similar data base on the Polish Air Force for 9.39, and are now working on a parallel DB for all British aircraft losses/damages for the EOE period, including Bomber Command and Coastal Command. Again, this is based upon Peter's previous work but greatly expanded and updated. Peter has recently already done similar data bases on the Dutch and Belgian AF, as well as the French AF, although the latter still probably needs a lot of work. All of these DB are undergoing constant revision, and probably will be forever. I want to encourage anyone who believes that they have located new and/or updated material on any aircraft loss incident during the 1939-40 period to contact me or Peter Cornwell so that this can be evaluated for inclusion into this definitive data base.
b) Collecting and identifying all known photos of the aircraft of all sides involved in the air war during the period in question and assembling these into a massive searchable DB that presently numbers about 30,000 images. A further 10-15,000 images are awaiting processing and coding for inclusion in this DB. This includes images from the major public collections on the subject in the US and Europe, as well as a vast amount of private material from individual collections and a variety of other sources, including eBay.
c) Acquiring all relevant literature sources in English, German, Polish, French, Norwegian and Dutch on the subject. We’ve been successful in acquiring a huge volume of material during this search process, including acquiring the full rights to the two Luftwaffe historical manuscripts and all of the supporting research material compiled by the late Heinrich Weiss, which alone comprises some 50,000+ pages, of which about 5,000 pages are his own manuscripts.
d) Identifying and acquiring copies of, and transcribing the approximately 500 logbooks that we think presently exist of German airmen that flew operational sorties during this period, including maritime, reconnaissance and transport units. We've now acquired copies of about half of these, including many of the most important, and are steadily getting them transcribed for inclusion in our research data base. These logbooks have been an important source of information for Peter's work on the Luftwaffe loss DB, and will go a long way towards filling in missing information on Luftwaffe combat missions flown during the WC and the Battle of Britain, many of which are not well documented through other sources and otherwise surviving Luftwaffe records. This is another area where a great deal of further assistance from the research community would be helpful. If you have any logbooks (Flugbuch) that you think we might not know about, or for which you have a copy and would be willing to share it with the project, I'd greatly appreciate hearing from you. This applies to the logbooks of Allied pilots and aircrew men as well.
e) Identifying and acquiring all surviving KTBs (Unit War Diaries) from the 1939-40 period. Although we've acquired a substantial amount of material in this area, we've got major work yet to do. If anyone has copies of any such documents that they would be willing to share with us, this would be greatly appreciated. Again, contact me if you can help.
f) Mapping. One of our British WG members has done a magnificent series of maps for us of about 20 major days during the Battle of Britain. These will serve as the basis for our mapping part of the project. We are still trying to formulate exactly how to most effectively portray visually on maps the various major combat events, but the work of this renowned illustrator has helped us go a long way in defining how these might look.
g) Artwork. Although we've done our research for the cover painting for the first volume of the series, and held some preliminary discussions with artists on the massive amount of color aircraft profile work to be done, no final decisions have been made in this respect.
h) Translating non-English languages sources into English. This is an area that is a huge challenge for us. We've had excellent support from a number of volunteers who have helped us with German, Polish, French and Dutch-language materials, but there is a vast amount yet to do and any assistance from anyone with good dual language translation skills and the time to work on this would be appreciated. If you've contacted me before about helping with this, and haven't heard back, please contact me again.
We've now completed translating into English probably 2000 or more pages of Polish-language materials, everything from major books, to individual accounts and combat reports. A very large amount of additional material has been summarized or excerpted into highly detailed individual narratives on each Polish air unit that fought during the 1939 campaign.
Several very important sources in French have been translated into English by one of our key volunteers in Belgium, and Dutch WG members have also translated a lot of material for us into English.
Our main, but not exclusive effort on the German side has been to translate the 1939-1940 parts of the manuscripts of the late Heinrich Weiss, who did not write on the Polish Campaign, but focused instead on Luftwaffe operations in the west during 1939-41. We've completed about 2000 typewritten pages or more of translations on his work and are making steady progress on this. The Weiss material, though very valuable and state of the art for its time, is dated and will require a lot of corrections and revisions before being able to serve as the basic outline underlying our research on the Luftwaffe side of the story for the period of the EOE Project.
So that gives a pretty good idea of what's been going on during the past couple of years. Huge progress, but a great deal of effort yet to go just to acquire and translate the materials necessary for a project of this scope and complexity.
The first volume, on the Polish Campaign, will probably not be published for at least a couple of years yet. This will serve as the prototype book for the series and I don't intend to rush this to press before I'm sure that we've achieved our goal of the definitive history of the subject, with all the appropriate photos, appendices, artwork and maps. The second volume, on the so-called Phony War and the Scandinavian Campaign will likely follow about a year after that. In the meantime, a great deal of work will be and is proceeding on the Western Campaign and the Battle of Britain, to the end of 1940, which will hopefully result in about a book a year thereafter.
At the moment, my personal message box is full, so wait a while to allow me to have time to clear it off before sending me any PM. And thanks to all of you who have helped with this and will help with this project in future. The EOE research team has contributed thousands of hours of work to this project and they are making a huge effort to do this important project justice. Many of them are among the top researchers in their respective fields, and we will all owe them a great debt of gratitude for their efforts as these volumes are published.
Regards,