GROUP, SQUADRON HISTORY/MISSIONS SITES DISAPPEARING

[fubar57]

Trolling through the webs looking for the above, I've noticed a disturbing trend....

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I know some have been re-linked to other sites but many seem to be lost forever. A shame as a lot of research material is lost. I wonder if we should start a thread to share what we saved for others to use. I'm not talking about published books but the actual documents themselves such as the one below

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This site has links to a ton 'o histories YellowAirplane.com: Bomber Groups from WW2 a huge list. Bomb Group World War 2 but many are "404". I have found some info using this....Internet Archive: Wayback Machine Some histories are owned by Group/Squadron sites themselves so obviously illegal use without permission but there is a crap-load out there on Public Domain. Thoughts.................?

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[tomo pauk]

Unfortunately, you are on point here, Geo.
Not just the dedicated units' web sites. The pdf archive of the Flight magazine is away for months now (no, I don't buy the corporate BS). Ditto for the cockpitinstrumente web site (fortunately, a good deal of manuals found there can be accessed on other sizes, like this one, or avialogs).

 

[Greg Boeser]

Yes, some really good ones have gone away.

 

[fubar57]

I've got close to 180 histories and documents. Still have many more to merge together

 

[fubar57]

Doing the 401st Bombardment Group (H) mission reports right now; the most labour intensive so far. They went on 245 missions from 11/26/1943 to 04/20/1945; each mission is a separate PDF of about 50-70 pages long and are very clear. Some info included in the reports...

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The web site itself is awesome. Click on the mission and you get a map of the take-off run...

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....aircraft and crew involved in the mission...

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....click on a crew and where applicable, a shot of the aircraft is include...

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[Greg Boeser]

That's very impressive.

 

[fubar57]

Comments section from Mission #32 - Berlin/Templin

 

[aacs45]

Many (not all) of these defunct sites are still accessible via the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive (a phenomenal non-profit). To access a site:
- go to archive.org
- near the top center, you'll see a tan box labeled "Wayback Machine"
- post the dead URL into the search box and hit enter
- the resulting screen is a timeline of every time the website was archived to the Internet Archive.
- select a year from when the original site was still active, then select one of blue dots on the subsequent calendar page
- and viola, you have the original site with the ability to then move to pages within the original site (with limits)
[webpages or sections that required a password to access are not salvageable via the Wayback Machine)

I use Internet Archive in my research daily. (I still access old pages from ArmyAirForces.com...though it can be cumbersome.) IA is intended to be a permanent archive of URLs, texts, pretty much whatever anyone wants to post that isn't under copyright. I strongly encourage its use for sharing AAF related items.

Those of us who research the AAF, are seeing the loss of materials. Some repositories restrict access, suffer from lack of qualified archival staff, and/ or are not publicly minded. Sometimes items simply get chucked by overwhelmed family members, or worse, sold to private collectors who do not share.

I am such a huge fan of the Wayback Machine and IA, that I'm happy to do an infomal zoom session showing how to use it and leverage it for research. (If the interest is there.)
Edited to add: I routinely save URLs to the Wayback Machine as well, especially when I encounter a website on its last days.
- KB