Moving on from Henks Legacy - A proposal

[paulmcmillan]

All

One of the suggestions was for us to try and continue the work Henk was doing. It was suggested that we could try and use Google Docs to improve on his work..

I have spent some time over the last week looking at the files, and trying to understand his index/filing system from what he provided me.. It appears that he had three main types of files

1) Spreadsheet of 'Unaccounted airmen'
2) Word document of Aircraft incidents and crew/casualties
3) Spreadsheet of aircraft and dates

It appears when he found an 'Unaccounted airmen' which involved an aircraft he moved it off 1) and on to 2) - if it was another reason for death he left it on 1) - he probably used 3 as a cross reference. However this in itself gave me a problem I do not know easily what is an "Accounted or UnAccounted Airman"

However, as a trial I have put a sample of the Spreadsheet of 'Unaccounted airmen' document into google docs if you feel you can contribute to it please let me know. This covers 1939 to the end of 1943 (11,000 records). From what I can work out this does not cover each casualty (in other words it is not as large as CWGC for period but has more detail where known) as when he matched Unaccounted to Accounted as I said before me moved it to 2)

For reasons I have stated before, I am not willing to add all in sundry to this list as I believe this will only lead to the data being misappropriated in the end. However there are a number of bona fida individuals on this web site who have a long and distinguished record contributing to this forum - so if you feel you can help then please email me on paul.mcmillan@email4u.com with your RAFCommand handle (so I know who you are) and I will add you in if I feel you can help.

Please note Henk, was very careful in stating his references and there is some complex cross reference in the data. However..... I certainly do not want this to be another 'LossBombers' with all its copyright issues, (which is another reason why access is limited) and certainly if any published authors or others on this site object to this I will pull it before I allow access (I will not open it up for at least a week). Though looking at the data most of it is what is in the public domain anyway.

If this is a success I will consider opening up the other files as well to a similar co-operative approach

Kind Regards

Paul McMillan

[Resmoroh]

Paul, Hi,
Agree with your sentiments. Needs to be some agreed tabular/spread-sheet format. Perhaps those who think they can be of assistance should contact Paul - as he suggests - and when that has been done somebody should chair a discussion group off-Forum to decide on the best way forward. That's just my thoughts!
Brian (Lyffe on the Forum) may wish to contribute but this morning he contacted me via his wife's machine to say that his own computer blew head gasket (or whatever they do!) yesterday and is currently totally Tango Uniform. Return To Serviceable Time is not currently known. Use me as a Post Office if necessary!
Rgds
Peter Davies

[CZ_RAF]

Thanks for your effort Paul, email sent.

Pavel