CWGC WW2 Air Forces Database (120633+ / 98.5% Done!) Just 1800 (< 1.5%) to go!

[Jagan]

Added several features over the past week.

Start with this link

http://www.rafcommands.com/database/...lno=&qt=&cur=0


1. Date Search now supports Month (YYYY-MM) in addition to Year and Actual Date
2. Results now show Trade (in Yellow box), Aircraft type and serial (in blue box) and AIR/NA/Forum reference in Red or YEllow box.
3. You can also search by aircraft serial number or by trade (search boxes on top)
4. Clicking on the serial number of an aircraft in this view will take you to the detail page - http://www.rafcommands.com/database/...php?uniq=L9297 that will show Casualities, AIR references, related posts in the forum that contain that ac's serial.
5. Finally gives a feature to link Henk's / Alex's Unaccounted airmen thread posts to the airmen entries - i did this for 1947 - eg http://www.rafcommands.com/database/...php?qdate=1947



There are a total of 124319 casuality records in this database. About 3292 records (2.65%) have the extra details populated. i.e all entries from 1939-01-01 till 1940-05-31 (just nine months of the war!)


i created a webpage from which entries can be updated. As this is all manual work in linking entries to serials and references, I would definitely appreciate extra help / volunteers for this. send me an email on admin AT rafcommands.com if you are willing to chime in.

this is the webpage. To use it you just use the forum credentials (after i give permissions), to login to a webpage and entries can be made..

[Alex Smart]

WOW, Jagan,
How do you do it ???

It takes me about a week to do what little I provide.

Well done you:)

Alex

[dennis_burke]

Well done Jagan. I would dearly love to assist but just have sod all time on top of all the other projects I'm not finishing.

[Jagan]

Alex , This is little effort to support what you have been doing with Henks database. Hopefully we will have a clear view of who is still left unaccounted for when this work is completed

Dennis, no worries - but whenever you run out of projects, you know where to come! :)


Some random observations :

-I tried to see how fast / or slow this work is - since i have had a lot of practice, it took me less than a day* to process the June 1940 entries. They number 932 records . The unaccounted records for June 1940 is 132 (15%)

-I havent done a day to day check of the unaccounted airmen threads, but one particular day was quite helpful 1940-06-25 . All the unit names and circumstances came from the forum thread.

-AIR81 records seem to be helpful only when it is Europe or N Africa. Anything beyond (S Africa, Aus, Canada) they are not of use.

-It is sobering when going over the lists of casualties in first months of the war.. lives and aircraft lost on raids that would have contributed little to the outcome in subsequent days.. it gets overwhelming after a while.



*The pace will certainly slow down when the AIR81 records are exhausted. referring to ORBs or other sources is not going to make the process fast. Conservatively - call this a Five year project

[dennis_burke]

See below. This post was in error

[Jagan]

Dennis, can you post the link to the index? I think i copied it earlier into this thread http://www.rafcommands.com/forum/sho...till-June-1940



One of the frequent issues is that i find airmen that are not mentioned in the AIR81 nor the Unaccounted threads - i.e. they are unaccounted even in our 'unaccounted threads'.

eg



http://www.rafcommands.com/database/...lno=&qt=&cur=0

has four airmen without units , Henks thread only mentions one of the four - KEYMER.. the other three are still unaccounted for.. there are such cases for almost every day.

[dennis_burke]

Oops. Good thing I wasn't looking at something dodgy when I copied that URL.

Here is the index. Probably no use.

http://www.ww2irishaviation.com/henksthreads.html

[Jagan]

Added this interactive map FWIW

http://www.rafcommands.com/database/wardead/maps.php

[Jagan]

Now has the Grave / Panel Ref number in results - it shows up as the icon.. hovering over it will show the Grave/Marker Ref

[Jagan]

Minor milestone - in the bid to make the airmen "accounted for" - we recently crossed "10,000"

There are a total of 122374 casualty records in this database. About 10969 records (8.96%) have some details on circumstances of death.

It took us a month and a half - made easy by the availability of AIR81 files and the great work on the yearly unaccounted threads..

Now if we can do this 12 times over, we will be done with this project ( WINK WINK!)