In General, What is Everyone Doing?

[aastyer]

I am doing reasearch for my wife's cousin (Rose). My wife (Melanie) is German. Her cousin's father (OFW Richard Stramm, who Rose never met) was a Luftwaffe HE 111 pilot who went missing on 1 Jan 43 during the Stalingrad Airlift on a flight between Morowskaya and Pitomnik. I have built one model of an HE 111 he would have flown with 5./KG55 during the BOB. I also want to build a model of his HE 111 he flew when he went missing. I would love to contact any of his former squadron mates. I know their numbers are dwindling. I can speak german and I tarvel to germany regularly. I would also love to find Herr Stramm's flugbuch, soldbuch and any HE 111 relics from the Volgograd area. I plan to take a battlefield tour of Volgograd some day too.

[VonWaffen]

Well same as Oberst , history accuracy , early plane skins for computer game , react of fact read in biography book from ww2 era.... I think is just a passion about that subject,,,,,Warbird lover go to air show , warbird fanatic surf the net to learn even more loll I think it s something like this

[Kenny Horne]

Hi Everyone,
Kenny Horne here. I am researching my Uncle James C Horne RCAF, both his childhood, and his service life.
Simply reading through these posts have been an education, and I hope to ask a few questions soon.

Thanks in advance,

Kenny

[noggin]

I started out tracing 2 allied aircraft that crashed into fields belonging to my paternal grandad. One a Polish Fairey Battle and the other a RAF HCU Stirling. After tracing the aircraft I became intrigued on what happened to the crews. Unfortunately the Polish crew were all killed in the accident. The 2 crew from the Stirling I traced with the instructor having had and interesting career during the war before becoming an instructor and survived hostilities and moving to South Africa. Unfortunately his pupil was shot down on his first mission with the loss of all crew. After this I tried the harder job of tracing the German crews that bombed the local ball bearing factory. I had 2 great aunts and my maternal grandad that work there , my grandad being an aux fireman wasn't actual at work on the day but turned up for his fire brigade duties and was injured when a 2nd aircraft attacked later that day. I traced the 2 crews with help from people on here although some of it is on going. But this then lead onto other attack on the town most of which were not common knowledge to most locals I spoke to.

[wargraves1967]

Well I guess it is my turn.

I am writing the story regarding the 154 airmen who are or were buried at the Adegem Canadian War cemetery, the Eeklo Town cemetery and the Maldegem Communal cemetery, all in Belgium. My main goal is to write especially regarding the men so people will know who they were, were they came from, .... when they visit the cemetery.

Due to divorce and cancer I have had a few serious set backs but now I am getting back on the tracks.

Well this is in brief what I am doing so if any one is willing to help or needs help, just drop me a line.

Thanks for reading this all

Sincerely

[Bas Maathuis]

Somewhere in the mid-nineties I got infected with a ‘historical aviation’ virus. I started to collect information off the gravestones of allied aircrew. The data was stored in a database that eventually became the Dutch Air War Study groups (or SGLO) database.
In 2005 I became a member with the SGLO and in spring 2008 I inherited all available SGLO data from my predecessor Frans Auwerda, and started to build the database and fill in all the gaps.
My personal goal was to have all SGLO data available online for everyone to see and search through.

“Wouldn’t be awesome if that youngster on the other side of the world could find out about his or her grandfathers last flight during WWII by using our online database….”

On the 29th March 2014 my dream came trough when the SGLO database went online thanks to my own son, aged 13 at that time, who build the environment to realize an online database.

I’m however fully aware that the database is not complete, and there still are many gaps to be filled with data that sometimes is already available. It will be a work in progress for the next couple of years. (If a day only had 48 hours instead of 24…)
I’m also aware that the database is not without faults and/or typos and it probably will never be.
Keep in mind that the SGLO database holds some 7400 a/c registrations, including over 22.000 names of aircrew.
Where humans are at work, mistakes will be made. I’m glad to be human!

Thanks to all who responded to my questions!

Bronkazonk, I haven't seen this mentioned so here goes. You are a movie producer. Wonderful!!! I believer there is nothing more compelling to any audience than the truth told honestly and completely. Hollywood often misses this point in favor of CGI and phoney story lines layered on pieces of the actual history. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in recent releases about WWII events (example not quoted so we don't head down a different rabbit hole but the folks on this forum know of the movies of which I speak).

Point is, forums like this delve into the minutia of history for the many reasons cited by previous responses to your post. it may seem anal and compulsive behavior but these are serious sifters of history. This can be grist that you, with your film making talents, can draw on to create an accurate and compelling story. If you have a specific question, ask it. This forum is, as one person already stated, pretty user friendly, and we will do the best to answer your questions no mater how basic or abstruse.

Good luck with your movie. We all will revel in its release IF it tells the real story.

Oh, by the way, I'm a retired experimental fighter test pilot, erstwhile modeler and non-professioal historian. I'm named after a WWII B-24 pilot killed coming off target at Regensburg 2-22-44. I've been able to reassemble the exact events of that day due to forums like this and official sources. Someday I'll write a book. Is that reason enough to be an anal-retentive seeker of minutia? To answer your question, that's what I'm, doing?

[vathra]

Hello everybody,

Let me introduce my work on this forum.
I am interested in ww2 history of Yugoslavia.

Currently, I am doing research on rescue of American airmen from Yugoslavia. I started with some books, then switched to MACRs, finally went to Escape and evasion statements. It is very interesting, almost detective work, finding links, missing data, etc. Also, it is one of the best covered parts of the war from personal side, since there is statement from almost every airmen, several dozens memoir books, interviews etc.
It is also very massive research. There were some 2,500 Allied airmen evacuated from Yugoslavia (of those, some 100 British, rest American). For majority I managed to find Escape statement, or some other source on their evasion.
I have wrote two articles on this topic which are waiting to be published in Serbian historical magazines. Research for book is almost finished.

Parallel to this research, I am working on two other projects:
- Allied bombing of Yugoslavia. Similar to previous research, I plan to start with analysis of smaller operations, and in time to expand research. For me, it was most difficult to find where are archive documents, and it goes easier after that.
- Effects of cryptography on events in Yugoslavia. Ultra is well known today, and it's effects on ww2. German cryptographer also had success against guerrilla radio traffic in Yugoslavia. Both those efforts had strategic effects on events in Yugoslavia.

[Teresa Maria]

No, not everybody asks for such detailed information about pilots' aerial victories and aircraft. Personally, I'm much more interested in their biographies, including their personal lives (of course, I don't poke my nose into very personal information, but I like to know, for example, whether they were married or had girlfriends, what kind of families they came from, etc.). Questions about, for example, the serial number of Walter Nowotny's Focke-Wulf, I find simply boring.

Originally Posted by Broncazonk

I'm trying to understand why such ultra-specific, super-detailed questions about Luftwaffe pilots, crash events and individual aircraft details are nearly all that is asked on this forum. (This is an honest question, please don't flame me.)

As for me, I'm working on a screenplay (for a major motion picture production company) circa late 1943 about the struggle for air superiority over Europe from primarily the German/Luftwaffe perspective. So details are wonderful, but some of the questions (and the amount of incredibly specific information that everyone seems to have in reply) is almost off the hook crazy. Wow.

Are people writing super detailed unit/pilot/aircraft histories? What's going on here?

Bronc

I have been undertaking research in my spare time as part of a project that a friend is putting together. This May marks the 75th anniversary of the Exeter Blitz (3/4 May) and it is hoped to have a DVD ready to mark the occasion.

Interviews have been conducted with surviving witnesses and archive photographs unearthed. My part in the project has been researching the graves of Luftwaffe crewmen buried in Higher Cemetery, Exeter. My first thread posted on this forum relates to one of the men buried there.

I have completed a model representing one of the aircraft shot down over the city (a Ju 88A-5) and hopefully will be able to add a Fw 190 (used in hit and run operations over the city) at a later date.