Thursday, December 9, 2010

Pearl Harbor... 69 years and two days later

Been a busy month... still is. Essentially sneaking this in while waiting for some backups to finish.

To commemorate the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I posted three ship damage reports:

USS Tennessee BB-43
USS Vestal AR-4
USS Oglala CM-4

I also worked with Navsource to get them some new photos, most never published before. Ship pages that had photos added include:

USS California BB-44
USS Oglala CM-4
USS Oklahoma BB-37
USS Shaw DD-373
USS Utah AG-16/BB-31
USS West Virginia BB-48

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Can't let a month go by without a post!

I've been remiss... it's been a busy month, and I like to have more tangible results than blog posts.

For the last two years or so I have been working with Dragon Models from Shanghai, China on a 1/350th Independence-class CVL. The kit is finally done and in final production... you can see their product page at http://www.dragonmodelsusa.com/dmlusa/prodd.asp?pid=DRA1024

Getting ready for this year's Pearl Harbor day... have Oglala and Vestal's damage reports just about done and am planning on having Tennessee's as well.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

An Axe to grind

I think we've all seen them, and many of us (present company included) have been them; the internet user with an axe to grind. Be it a company that did you wrong, a sports team that is your favorite / the enemy, or a historical point of fact that you think you know a lot about, there are times when someone just will not let go of something.

So for that, I created the following graphic; feel free to use it on any forum or site that you think appropriate. And for those copy write lawyers from the future with an axe to grind because they think someone other than me copy-wrote the image, I released it on this day under the guidelines of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial License.



Saturday, August 21, 2010

Challenge Update

I've finished the USS Enterprise Guadalcanal Damage Report other than the final proof reading. That is doable barring big blow-ups at work.

It's been interesting and sobering to read through as I work on it; her Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships Entry just says, " On 24 August a strong Japanese force was sighted some 200 miles north of Guadalcanal and TF 61 sent planes to the attack. An enemy light carrier was sent to the bottom and the Japanese troops intended for Guadalcanal were forced back. Enterprise suffered most heavily of the United States ships, 3 direct hits and 4 near misses killed 74, wounded 95, and inflicted serious damage on the carrier. But well-trained damage control parties, and quick, hard work patched her up so that she was able to return to Hawaii under her own power" but the report highlights more details that paint this in a bit more of a serious light to me:

This bomb detonated almost against the armor plate protecting the ready torpedo and warhead stowage, but no fragments penetrated the armor.

Had this armor not held and the torpedoes been exposed to the blast, what would have happened to the war?

Sunday, August 15, 2010

If History happens and no one remembers, did it ever really happen?

My wife and I ate lunch yesterday on the cuise ship MS Rotterdam of the Holland America line. She was docked at Pier 91 in Seattle, former site of US Navy Base Seattle. While I was there, I shot some photos of the USS Green Bay LPD-20 getting under way and heading north. It was a hazy day, so the first shot is much hazier than we'd all prefer, but just imagine it clear in your mind:



As she headed west she became less back lit and stood out in better detail:



However, as I researched to provide some extra information in this post, it became apparent that Navy Base Seattle has been largely forgotten; The first two hits were from images I sent to Navsource some time ago, such as their LST-817 page showing the ship loading for the invasion of Okinawa.

In fact, it's not until you start looking for Smith Cove that you really start finding information out, such as that the house I shot below is known as the Admiral's House:



Looking South from the "Lido Deck" (deck 8) stern, we had a great view of the bulk carrier Tian Du Feng loading grain at the Port of Seattle 'Bulk Marine Terminal':



Other than my wife's iPod disappearing aboard ship, it was a pleasurable morning.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

A Challenge!

While looking for some information this morning I came across a damage report that I had on my list, but lower down priority wise. However, I noticed this time that it was for action this month in 1942. So here is my challenge: to see if I can post and proofread 24 pages of text in 13 days! You can follow my progress here!

Friday, July 23, 2010

Update from way high up!

Greetings from 34,00 feet, where I'm winging my way north. I just uploaded the latest update using the in-flight wi-fi as a fun little thing to do.

So, without further ado:

Interview of

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER J. R. LEE, USN
Formerly VS-10 ENTERPRISE, now C.O. AIR GROUP

With Additional Comment By

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER L. J. KIRN, USN
Commanding VS-3

in the
Bureau of Aeronautics
14 April 1943

The Flag goes up at 0700

I'm sitting outsite the San Bruno Archives on my last day here; a half hour before they open. Building facilities just raised the American flag for the day, and 200 feet away the 380 is broadcasting the morning commute to the neighborhood. I'd like to thank John and his team members Mike & Nick for allowing me to tag along with them, without John's invitation this trip wouldn't have been possible. A thanks you as well to Robert Glass of the National Archives, San Bruno, who is "the man" for navy archival holdings here, and the staff, who always make the research here as fun and efficient as one could expect. I'd also like to give a thanks to a new contact, Jerry, who has started researching here and was kind enough to share some information with me; I'm hoping we can collaborate on projects in the future to bring everyone more great documents to read.

So far this trip, like most of them, has not seen the results I was hoping for, but at the same time has exceeded expectations. Fans of Pearl Harbor will be happy as I came across and scanned in many reports and information regarding the attack & its aftermath. Fans of Guadalcanal will be happy as well. I will be busy for many months stitching damage plates back together and posting reports.

Twenty minutes until opening... I'm going to see if I can stitch a damage plate back together before then....

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Interesting factoid

Cab fare between The San Francisco Airport and the San Francisco branch of the National Archives is roughly $15, or $45 if you realize when you arrive at the archives that you left your laptop on the plane and have to go back for it.

Thanks to Marcus and Joy and whomever else was in the background of Alaska Airlines for aiding me in its recovery. Thankfully I realized it within about 20 minutes of touch down so it didn't have a chance to get far into the lost & found system.

Only cost me $30 in cab fare and about an hour and 15 minutes of time, which I consider a bargain cost for the lesson, as opposed to loosing a laptop and a week's research time!

I've been stuck in a battleship quagmire... so much good stuff it's hard to get out. Damage reports for California, Nevada, Tennessee, and hopefully Vestal will hopefully be scanned in by the end of the day. Many photos of the ships of Pearl Harbor and the divers that I have not seen before have been scanned in; a section on the salvage divers is probably in the future now.

Time for breakfast and to head to the archives!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Dangers of Airshows

I have a hereditary pre-disposition to shutter-bugging I got from my Dad; yesterday is a case in point. It was the "Joint Base Lewis McChord" (nee McChord Air Force Base) air show; in something like three hours I shot over 1,000 images. Hooooo boy am I glad I'm digital!

We bopped around, trying to see both the static aircraft and the air show... occasionally when caught by surprise I would shoot from the static aircraft area, which can lead to little oopses like:



Another hazard is weather; in our case we were lucky that the marinelayer of clouds burned off by about 12:30-1PM, but while it was doing so there were times I shot photos like this:



I'm still going through and deleting the blurry shots... my auto-focus hasn't worked well for a while and my skills of keeping a fast-moving aircraft in-focus are still shaky at times, but I had a few nice ones....







Wake-up for tomorrow's flight down to San Francisco is 0-dark-300.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Moved!

Man, what a PITA.. time sucker.

Time to start ramping up for the trip to San Bruno in two weeks. Have a new interview just about done; needs some proof-reading and it'll be ready to post.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Deadly, Deadly Pianos.

Quiet on the blog front lately as my wife and I are moving and most free time is taken up with packing. I did manage to finish the BuOrd Pamphlet for the Mk8 Fire Control Radar and post for those interested in US Navy battleship & cruiser fire control.

I started a new interview; two scouting squadron commanders in April of 1943. One of the humorous aspects of my work is the occasional OCR glitch that happens to make a sentence a lot stranger or funnier than the author intended. For example, "planes" will come through as "pianos" due to the similar shapes in the second and fifth character. So you read sentences that refer to high-altitude bombing by carrier-based pianos, or two pianos dropping depth charges on a u-boat... gives me a little chuckle from time to time.

Also managed to arrange for a trip down to San Francisco next month for a week of research thanks to the kindness of a friend. Minor joy.....probably the only trip this year.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day, 2010

A large part of why I do the site is Veterans; I've come across so many documents that bring up actions and sacrifice unknown to me and perhaps the population at large that it seems a shame to not share them. To the ones who gave their lives defending the United States of America; we are eternally humbled by your actions, great or small. To those that survived, wounded in flesh or spirit, I offer thanks and the hopes that you feel gratitude from others not just on this day, but every day.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

What a Battleship can do for your web traffic

I use Google Analytics to watch what the site is doing traffic wise. I usually pull in between 75-100 visitors a day, not enough that the site makes any money, but enough that I know that people are finding interesting things to read.

Occasionally there's a spike of 40-50 hits that I can trace down to a forum stumbling across an article and discussing it, but last week I had the biggest spike I've yet seen:



Two days prior I had posted this memo regarding BB-59 Massachusetts' experience in a storm that suggested her to be not suited to rough weather, at least not early in her career. I usually toss a quick notice on Twitter and save the rest for notices on my monthly updates, but I decided for fun to post it on ModelWarships' and SteelNavy's forums to maybe start some discussions. Two days later is the spike, which coincides with when a thread started on the NavWeaps board.

Nothing ground shaking, just interesting. Truly if you want a spike in traffic you need to get noticed on a social media site or message board.

Technique - Photoshop Levels

One of the techniques I use heavily is the photoshop "levels" command. Even if a document that is scanned in is on white paper, there will be background noise that shows up. Levels allows one to take much of that out. This came up when I was talking with a friend and commented that I wished the Historic Naval Ship Association would do it on some of their documents. While it can add a few seconds to each document, I do believe the results are worth it, if you're aiming for a document that prints well or is to be reproduced in a book or magazine.

The below images show the technique I came up with farting around on my own; I don't profess to be a master, and I'm using a ten year-old version of Adobe Photoshop, so your screen may look a little different if you're trying this for the first time on a newer version, but the principles are the same.

In photoshop, go to "image" --> "Adjust" and choose "levels." You'll wind up with something that looks like the below image:



Now, take the black point slider on the left and move it towards the center, to make the darks darker, and then the white point slider on the right and move it to the center, to make the whites whiter. You are essentially adjusting the contrast of the image. Each image will have a different histogram, so there is no set value in the input level boxes up top that you can memorize and set. What I've found works best for me is to move the white point slider either to the center of the hump on the right of the histogram, or a bit beyond it towards center; this will take out a lot of the background noise, but also fades the black text and lines out a bit. So we then compensate by taking the black point slider in to where there is a a little bit of histogram showing, which will darken our lines back up. Such as you see below:



So, now I invite you to compare the results below with the original, both on screen and with a print out.



This is also a technique I've found that can be used to increase OCR accuracy when converting document scans to HTML. It essentially filters out most of the noise that can confuse OCR programs but I only use it in selected sheets as it does add a minute or two to each page.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

The Process

I'm somewhat unique in what I do... while sites like Hyperwar and the Historic Naval Ships Association post documents from archives. I spend more time on formatting with HTML; the downside is slower "production" but I believe it makes some of the documents easier to read and "get" where one page transitions to another. All-in-all, I think we have a good ecosystem of postings with good variety and flavor. In fact, I've made arrangements that if I get hit by a bus or something similar, the documents I've posted will wind up on Hyperwar in some form, so there should be good coverage over the years.

I thought I'd write a bit about how I post a document. I could simply post jpgs or convert to PDF, but the disadvantage is that the text isn't indexable and for people with slower connections, it can take an awful long time to load 10 pages of large jpgs.

So I still hand-write my pages with the thought of trimming as much as possible out of the code to keep it fast-loading while at the same time preserving the formatting of the original. I've been aided in the last five years by the progression of OCR software, and the picture below shows a little bit of my workflow:



Left screen has the OCR program and the right screen is Homesite, my web page software of choice for a scarily long time now. I started with notepad back in 1995, and at some point soon after switched to a freeware program called DerekWare, which had buttons for dropping in pieces of code, and was a little more friendly for web design. It had one limitation I discovered after a bit, in that it couldn't handle pages larger than 21k, which was fine for a bit, but today some of my documents would blow it out of the water (the USS San Francisco Guadalcanal Damage Report is just about 100k in text and code alone, and the 1941 US Navy Fleet listing is over 125k). I purchased Homesite before the millennium and upgraded to version 5 maybe a year or two after... it's worked fine in Vista and Windows 7 so I'll probably be using it for another five years at least.

The current OCR program is Abbyy Fine Reader, which came bundled with my microtek scanner. It's a definite improvement over the OmniPage software I started with, but it's also newer... albeit itself it's at least two years old now. It does fairly well as long as the scans weren't of onionskin copies that were a couple of generations away from the original... in that cases it's faster to re-type things from scratch, and for the most part I tend to avoid those projects now. There are a couple of quirks; it consistently reads "ltr." as "Itr," and sometimes "planes" as "pianos," which can lead to some fun mental images when you read about pianos strafing or dropping depth charges. Because some of these are subtle differences in characters, I always do two passes of proofreading; one in Homesite's code view for the obvious stuff, and then another in the actual web browser to find things that are subtle, such as Os when I need 0s. Below is an example of what I consider an OK OCR pass:

As was suggested in reference (c}^ th® Bureau has mad© an evaluation of the gasoline capacity and steaming radius of the several carriers in service. These data are furnished below and are bfised on information available to the Bureau o« fuel oil and gasoline consumption for the second and third quarters of the fiscal year 1942,


Each paragraph takes maybe a minute or two to proofread and format. Document headers and things with more formatting-per-text take longer, of course.

I test the documents in IE8, Firefox, SeaMonkey (a firefox derivative that's my browser and e-mail client of choice) and recently Chrome. There are some differences in how they handle spacing so I don't sweat a space off here and there between the browsers, but what you see is probably 90% of the formatting on the original.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Today is history

At least, for a little while I have decided to back-burner the "today in Pacific WWII History" feature on the site. It's been sucking up all of my work time and I'm not getting much work done on new documents, nor have I had the energy to blog. I still plan on working on it and not only finishing it, but expanding it, but for the time being I need to keep this fun and not feeling like a burden.

So... some catch-up. On the first of this month I had the good fortune to visit with Gary Kingzett and Lou Parker. Lou served in WWII on the command staff for a cruiser division; hence he bounced back and forth between the cruisers San Francisco and Wichita. He's a great guy and interesting as hell to talk to.

The Seattle IPMS club held its annual Spring Show a couple of weeks ago, at which I gave a presentation on the Aircraft at Pearl Harbor.

I have managed to get in a little document work here and there.. I've finished an interview with two of the pilots who were on the mission to shoot down Admiral Yamamoto done shortly after they returned to the states. I have another one regarding the photo-reconnaissance in place in the med during operations there, and it is quite interesting to read how much they were tasked with doing and how broad of a program it was.

I also picked up a 1/350th model of USS Nimitz CVN-68 that I'll be doing as USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71 during the First Gulf War. That... will be quite the project.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Happy Spring!

Some house cleaning items.

I came across some aviation stuff the last two trips and am working on posting it ahead of some other items for a couple of reasons. I like aviation, I want to broaden the site from being so ship specific, and frankly the amount of digital stitching to get some of the drawings for the 1.1" manual has got me dreading the project.

The "Today in History" project continues to swallow a lot of time as well. My goal has been to have at least two items per day, and that can take some time. Each entry takes about 20-30 minutes minimum to find, research, and expand upon. It's been a fun learning process, but it also slows down the new document posting, for something that doesn't add "much" to the site.

Also adding to the slowdown is an impending move; months away, but packing needs to start now.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

I think my blog is getting more traffic....

Either that or the blogger CAPTCHAs are loosing their effectiveness. I'm starting to get post spam more regularly....

For something useful to the readers; March updates are posted and I've got two documents working for the April update; a memo from the captain of USS Erie PG-50 to the Secretary of the Navy in regards to the torpedoing and beaching of his ship, and an interview of USS Bogue CVE-9's captain and air group commander in regards to convoy escort and ASW activities; one interesting story was a pilot who made too fast of an approach and dropped his depth charges very low on the submarine he was attacking and the angle and speed caused them to skip and bounce higher into the air than he was in the cockpit.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Oops

Accidentally broke the "Today in History" script for a couple of days. Fixed now.

For those that might have missed the new twitter integration on the front page, I finished a new damage report a couple of days ago as part of the March updates. Just need to finish proofreading another document and the March updates are both done.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Today in History.

Well, the second major portion of the "Today in the Pacific Theater" is done; a script to flip between entries randomly if there's more than one significant event per day. The hope is that over time every day will have multiple entries, but obviously that'll take some time to populate.

For now, hit refresh if you want to see if there was another significant event. I'm thinking about adding another script that might scroll them instead of randomly displaying one.... but that's off in the future.

Just about finished the main entry for next month's update as well, a US Navy Sea Going Tugs booklet. Some love for the small boys that were oh-so-necessary!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Oh, Hell yes!

First off, today is my 8th wedding anniversary to my wife Robin, a very beautiful woman who understands me enough to not only tolerate my interest in history, but encourage it. Such women can be incredibly rare and I am luckier than I deserve.

When I first created R@L, one of the features I wanted was a "Today in history" blurb that would automatically update. I had seen something similar on the Navy Historical Center's site, but the code was kind of ugly; it basically loaded the entire year into the main page, bloating the size up quite a bit. Since I wanted the option of perhaps having multiple entries for a day, it was not a viable way of working this out.

I took a few stabs at it, spent some time drawing out the logic, but never managed to make something that could work. I hadn't messed around with it for about a year or so, but last night I decided that I was going to see what I could do in the couple of hours I had this morning before Robin woke up. The results were a surprise; I got it working with few problems and it's far simpler than I had ever managed to conceptualize before. It's only nine lines of code in the main page....

...and 366 separate documents for each day of the year.

Sooo... yeah, I have MORE work cut out for me now.

I basically blended code I found from three pages; this one to write out the script I heavily modified from this one.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Pearl Harbor Camouflage

First, a little background. For those that don't know, there is a little controversy in regards to the camouflage worn by many ships of the US Navy during the attack at Pearl Harbor. My introduction to this was the winter of 2005, when myself and a couple of others were asked for help in determining Battleship Arizona's final paint scheme. We found some highly circumstantial evidence but no proof, and I have maintained a keen interest in finding out one way or another just what this historic ship looked like at the time of her demise.

At this point the search has seen extensive research in two archives (San Francisco and Seattle) and the records of three shipyards (Mare Island, Pearl Harbor, and Puget Sound) and one naval district (13th Naval District, essentially the Northwestern US) along with some non-Pearl Harbor research in various other records such as Astoria Navy Base just to try and build a complete understanding about how the Navy went about camouflage in the Second World War.

Using those resources we have been able to build up a "higher resolution" picture of the turbulent year of 1941, and yet there is much that remains unknown.

We know that in January, 1941 a change in camouflage was ordered, but that due to production problems and supply difficulties, it took time to build up significant quantities of the new paints and adoptions seems to have started around June of that year. However, the main color for the majority of the ships, 5-D Dark Gray, was not found satisfactory and by July the Navy ordered its production halted and 5-S Sea Blue mixed as its replacement.

This is the point at which things really get murky. The Navy did not do a good job of promulgating this order, sending it only to the three Navy Yards responsible for manufacturing paint for the various fleets as well as four commands (Atlantic Fleet, Pacific Fleet, "Air Force" [Not Army Air Force but the Navy command in charge of aircraft], and OPNAV [Office of the Chief of Naval Operations]). This resulted in a lot of confusion and resentment when ships and commands kept sending in requisitions for old paint formulas.

Initially Mare Island Navy Yard answered the requests of other yards and ships with letters listing the new formulas and an order to re-request the desired materials, but by late September they were ordered to simply substitute the new paints for the old.

So it would seem that by October the Navy Yard at Pearl Harbor and ships based there should have started receiving the new paints, but this is not a hard fact at all. Indeed, a memo found in the records of the suggest that at the earliest it was late October that they knew for sure.

This memo deserves its own discussion. There is a typo in a date that can be confusing; the second paragraph starts with "Today, August 22..." This is clearly incorrect as the date occurs before the shipyard received the file. This memo discusses a letter from Mare Island to Pearl Harbor that was lost for six weeks in internal mail before being found and finally delivered. The letter in question was the aforementioned Letter to re-calculate paint needed and re-requisition the amounts. So Pearl Harbor did not officially know about the new paints until October 22.

This might not be that big of a deal in that the new paints were actually made using the same stocks as some of the old ones. 5-L Light Gray and 5-O Ocean gray were made by mixing specific amounts of a tinting paste into a white, un-tinted base. 5-S Sea Blue and 5-H Haze Gray were created by simply creating different ratios of the same tinting paste and untinted base, so if they had the stock to mix Ocean Gray they could do Sea Blue. But, at this point we don't even know when Pearl Harbor had the supplies to issue those two components of the paints.

Documents from August and September hint that Pearl Harbor did not have the facilities to provide the new paints; CL-50 Helena was not only ordered to paint into 5-S Sea Blue at Mare Island, but was also ordered to pick up paints for other cruisers at Mare Island at the end of September. Ships of Destroyer Division Nine were ordered to paint in variations of measures during overhaul at Mare Island in October.

These last documents throw in a new wrinkle; they are not from the Bureau of Ships or any Navy Yard, but from the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, Commander of Destroyer Flotilla One, and the Commander Cruisers, Battle Force.

The question left unsolved at this point is, if the Commander of Cruisers, Battle Force, knew about the new paints and Pearl Harbor Navy Yard didn't, would there be any sort of interaction that would bring this to Pearl Harbor's attention? Would ComCruBatFor have requested the paint from PHNY first, or is there some other documentation thus undiscovered that would explain more?

What orders could these commands have given to the ships they administered that we haven't seen yet? And if Pearl Harbor didn't have the knowledge about the paints until late October, does it really matter if the various commands of the fleet DID have the knowledge and their supply chains did not exclusively flow through Pearl Harbor Navy Yard?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Updates & Changes

How about that prior petulant post ...

So, I've kicked off some changes, mainly an effort to bring things out a bit quicker and to more people, but with the intent of not changing much for those who like things the way they are.

I've started a twitter account at https://twitter.com/ResrcherAtLarge for those that like tweets. The way I'm planning on working this is that as I finish a document, I'll tweet it. It won't give any sort of context or extra commentary the way the blog and updates page do, but for those who don't want to wait around or want some sort of notification this will be a step in the right direction. The twitter page will also post links to the documents on the anniversary date they were originally released, so there's an added bit of fun as well. Blog and monthly updates will continue on as before for those who like it that way.

I may set up a facebook account for R@L in addition, that is to be determined.

Comments either way welcomed.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Rant at Receptionists

I get that you have busy days and high call volumes. I get that you might not know if Bill is in the office or not. But please, would you actually LISTEN to what I say instead of presuming you know what I'm calling for?

But when I call and ask, "is Bill available," that does NOT mean "please transfer me to his extension." It is a question. You answer with "I don't know, but I can transfer you to his extension," or "He's on the other line, can I transfer...." if your phone system shows that. If I truly wanted to leave him a message I would ask for his voice mail or send a damned e-mail.

LISTEN to what the callers are saying, dammit!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Nobody Loves me and Neither Do I.

First off, that's the title of the song I've got playing right now by Them Crooked Vultures. If you like Led Zeppelin, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, or good rock in general they're worth checking out.

I simply couldn't come up with a "I haven't updated yet because I'm behind on other projects" title that was even partially witty. On to "Mind Eraser, no Chaser."

Got some camo updates that are ready to go, I just need the time to link to them all. Looks like the time this weekend's going to be spent rebuilding my work laptop; it's been running well on Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 since last May, but a test install of the latest Sonicwall Global VPN client blew up the wireless and the RC runs out at the end of the month anyway.

So, hopefully Sunday night or early next week.

I'm also leaning towards setting up RSS, Twitter, and Facebook for the site so people can be notified of updates then and there... if you'd like to provide feedback drop me a line.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Passive Defense is GO!

Passive defense is now finished and posted under. This section includes the original Passive Defense Handbook 1, a supplement on fuel tank camouflage, the Second Supplement, with more on paint, and for now ends with the third supplement, with instructions for camouflaging airport runways and roads.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Happy 2010

Welcome to the last year of the new millennium! A little surprise for all y'all reading this on a regular basis. Ron Smith was one of a few of us that went looking for information regarding Arizona's final camouflage to assist Don Preul in building a new model of the Battleship Arizona for the Arizona Memorial Visitors' Center. He has now sent me some of his findings, and it turns out one section was an additional part of the Passive Defense Handbook that the Seattle Archives did not have. So I'm going to work on that and finish it before I add any of the other ones, which are now all complete. The new find is only about 5-6 pages long and should not take long to add.

To give you an idea of what is in store, I've got through roughly 2/3 of his first set of documents and I've got 73 pages I've pulled aside to post.