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