Volume

I've been gearing up for a trip to NARA II in College Park this October. One of the topics I'd like to make some progress on is the 1945 shift to neutral camouflage colors on Navy ships. The colors were ordered into use in February of 1945, but the it's a question as to when and if certain ships were painted in them.

So, I'm going through some of the online finding aids in "ARC" I'm going through all of the folder listings for "Commander, South Pacific Area and Force. (04/13/1942 - 09/02/1945)" which is 175 boxes long. Obviously, I am not tearing through these very quickly.....

I'm at the Logistics section right now, and there are 18 folders listed with the L21 designation, which covers shipments. There's also a separate file code under materials for paint, JJ52 (no hits in this accession), and one under ships materials, S19. Complicating the problem, camouflage and paint directives were sometimes issued under administrative orders (A codes) or fleet orders (FF codes). I digress....

These 18 folders occupy boxes 28 through 31, and since all ARC lists is the folder titles and file codes, I don't know if there's actually any paint information in them or if they only deal with the base commanders staff car replacement. What's also adding to the volume of work is that this accession was broken down into three sections, so those 18 folders are just the first set; there are two more

Then, of course, there are the twenty-three BOXES of secret  memos; I've found at least two memos in other archives from that group:
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/S19-7/1944JulyPacificPTCamo.html
http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/S19-7/1945FebruaryCVCamouflage.html
Since the Fleet Maintenance Office was responsible for camouflage paint, this is another area to hit.

And this is just one accession of records.

Memorial Day, 2012

'Twas late in the day when I received this.... I had mulled posting something, but had found nothing that felt adequate. This takes care of that. In memory of all who made the ultimate sacrifice..... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2487638612433437293&q=Vetera

Research Time-lapse

Finally managed to pull off something I've wanted to do for a bit; a time-lapse video of what it's like at the Seattle branch of NARA. San Bruno is similar; I haven't been to the new Riverside one yet. NARA II in College Park is much different. Record types are divided by floors (textual, cartographic, film, photographic) and instead of the 8-15 the regionals can fit in they can handle maybe hundreds on the textual records floor. The nice thing about the regionals is that they're a lot quieter, and Seattle has one table off to the side that I could set up a camera at without getting one else in frame (a no-no without prior permission).

(Note - the video is a little wider than what the format of the Blog will allow... click on the "Researching at the Seattle Branch..." text on the top of it to open in a new window if you'd like to watch.)

What this illustrates is the basic process of looking for information and then capturing it. One box of records at a time on the table. One folder from that box out at a time, with it's position marked so that you return it to the same place. One sheet of paper out of that folder is allowed out at a time, so that there is less of a chance of the records getting mixed.

There is no text search. There is no google. There is simply page after page of paper that must be gone through some how. There are no document-feeder scanners; the presumption is that every document you handle is the last surviving copy, and thus you want to avoid destroying it with a feeder jam. Some people work around the slowness of a scanner with either a fast, expensive scanner or a good camera mounted in a camera stand, but I prefer to scan over camera as I don't really have a time constraint and the quality is much better. This is more of an issue with photographs than textual records, however.

Research at the archives, while rewarding, does not happen at internet speed.

Normalisation of Deviance

A little I.T. digression from the normal History stuff. I came across the term "normalisation of deviance" recently in an article about the Hubble Telescope mirror fiasco. It's a term that has application in the I.T. world, and one that any good support person or company should strive to notice and avoid.

We run into it a lot when there's a rush to complete a project, or when there's a great number of tasks firing at the same time. The trick is to keep track of all the open items and not let them fester. Not only can they lead to loss of data and heartache for a client, but as an outsourced IT consultant, it can lead to loss of a client even if nothing "bad" happens and the aberration is discovered in advance of a catastrophe.

I always tell our new consultants, "backups are your most important insurance policy." Yet since they are pretty boring they're one of the most overlooked. It's the first thing I look at when taking over a new client from another company, and I'd say about a third have some sort of issue, from a particular server that doesn't back up successfully, to in one case, an entire very expensive infrastructure that had no backups even after 18 months of implementation!

They are a regular "target" of normalisation of deviance; but often we see things like patching and anti-virus that doesn't update properly in a state of deviance. Like a space disaster, things go fine until all of a sudden the IT support group gets into a cascade of failures, where one small failure begets a larger group that winds up unhappily for everyone involved.

An early 2012 look at visitors

Hadn't been planning on doing this, but since I had to try and figure out how many of my readers are still using dial-up internet, it was a good time.

As of March 25th, 72% of all visitors are new, and 27% of you are returning visitors.

* 45% of the site visitors are using Internet Explorer (46% IE8, 40% IE9, 11% IE7, Thankfully just under 2% on IE6, and two visits on IE10, of which one was me testing)
* 25% are using Firefox (57% on version 10, 11% on version 11, 7% on version 9, 3% on version 8, and just under 9% on versions 4 and earlier.)
* 15% are using Chrome (.6% on version 18, 91% on version 17, .6% each on versions 16 and 15, and .42% on version 12)
* 9% are using Safari (Build numbers are a bit weird - 25% on 7534.48.3, 8% on 6533.20.27, and ~55% on 533/534.X.X)
* 1.75% are using Opera (3.5% using version 12, 85.5% using version 11, with 8-10 at about 1.75% each)
* 1.6% are using an Android browser (Tablet or Smart phone)

* 85% are using Windows (46% Win7, 39% WinXP, 14% Vista, less than 1% total "everything else")
* 7% are using Macintosh (27% 10.7 "Lion," 46% 10.6 "Snow Leopard," 18% 10.5 "Leopard," 8.5% 10.4 "Tiger")
* 2% are using iPad (no version info)
* 1.6% are using Android (13.5% version 3 variants, everything else some version of version 2.3 or 2.2)
* 1.2% are using iPhone/iPod (no version info)
* .75% are using Linux (no version info)
* .09% are using Blackberry (no version info)
* .03% are using Chrome OS (netbooks)

5% of the visitors were from mobile devices and 95% were from more traditional laptops or workstation/home systems

Royal Navy Requests

This is something I run into every once and a while and try to move things forward, or at least re-learn what I knew. Rather than continue to have to re-learn every time, I figured I'd post what I knew here so I or others can reference it in the future.

In the year before the official US entry into WWII, there were several Royal Navy ships that came to American ports for repairs following war damage. Needless to say, helping a country during war when we were professing to be neutral was highly "questionable," to say the least. The US Navy needed to track costs, but in a way that was more secure.

Thus became the "Work Request," where repairs to foreign ships were classified in a system that did not mention name or nationality, stripping all but a numeric identity from all correspondence. I first came across this with Work Request 126, for HMS Warspite, which was repaired at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. I've seen them much higher, so it appears that the Navy kept the system in place throughout the war, likely as a convenient system to continue to track work on foreign ships.

Jerry Leslie mentioned that there are different terms the US Navy used over time and we know that the Royal Navy had their own nomenclature. A memo Jerry referenced, dated September 3, 1941, uses the term "British Advisory Repair Mission," or "BARM" for short. In July of 1942 this is changed to British Admiralty Maintenance Representative, or BAMR. The Royal Navy, for their part, organized their forces working with North American under groups referred to as the "British Admiralty Delegation" with a special group focused on repair (BADR).

The ones I know for sure:
Work Request 104 - HMS Liverpool - Mare Island Naval Shipyard 1941
Work Request 126 - HMS Warspite - Puget Sound Naval Shipyard 1941

These additional listings come via Sean Hert, Roger Torgeson, and Rick Davis:
WR101 HMS Delhi (1941 - Brooklyn Navy Yard)
WR103 HMS Illustrious (12-41 - Norfolk Navy Yard)
WR109 70FT MBT XPT 10-19
WR128 HMS Dido
WR129 HMS Formidable
WR137 HMS Furious
WR149 HMS Cathay
WR151 MS Alcatara
WR164 HMS Firedrake
WR170 HMS Caradoc New York NY October 1941
WR171 HMS Queen Elizabeth, Norfolk NY, June/43
WR173 HMS Royal Sovereign, Philadelphia NY, Sept 1943
WR176 HMS Indomitable (1944- Norfolk NY)
WR177 HMS Glasgow (1/8/42 - New York NY)
WR178 HMS Durban
WR179 HMS Penelope (10/5/42 - New York NY)
WR181 HMS Newcastle (21/11/42 - New York NY)
WR182 HMS Nigeria
WR186 HMS Phoebe New York NY - 15 June 1943 WR187 HMS Argonaut, Philadelphia NY November/43
WR188 HMS Ajax, New York NY 5 March 1943 WR191 HMS Celandine (K 75)
WR196 HMS Burnham
WR196 HMS Burnham
WR212 HMS Avenger
WR216 HMS Biter
WR219 HMS Dasher
WR224 HMCS Eyebright (K 150) (ex. HMS Eyebright)
WR227 HMCS Arrowhead (K 145) (ex. HMS Arrowhead)
WR230 HMS Burwell
WR231 MS Carnavan Castle
WR242 HMS Devonshire
WR257 CAP des PALMES (June 1944 Mare Island Navy Yard)
WR258 HMS Churchill (I 45) -ex USS Herndon (DD 198)
WR280 HMS Arethusa (11/12/43 - Charleston Navy Yard)
WR283 ?? - March 1943 Mare Island/Hunters Point & Bethlehem Steel Oakland CA
WR289 HMCS Fennel (K 194) (ex. HMS Fennel)
WR290 HMCS Bittersweet (K 182) (ex. HMS Bittersweet)
WR292 HMS BAZELY (BDE-2), Boston Navy Yard May 1943
WR298 HMCS Caraquet (J 38)
WR299 HMS Guysborough
WR314 HMS Dido (6/11/44 - Philadelphia Navy Yard)
WR329 HMCS Collingwood (K 180) 11.15.43
WR341 HMCS Dunvegan (K 177)
WR343 HMS Uganda Charleston Navy Yard, October 1944
WR344 ??? early 1944 Mare Island Navy Yard or Terminal Island US Naval Drydock
WR358 HMCS Arrowhead (K 145)
WR359 HMCS Snowberry (K 166)

Below is a list of known numbers that we don't know the ship of, submitted by Rick Davis. Note that the numbers aren't sequential by date of work start:

Request 186, arrived 16 January 1943 - (probably a cruiser) New York Navy Yard
Request 262, arrived 11 January 1943 - New York Navy Yard
Request 269, arrived 13 February 1943 - Boston Navy Yard
Request 272, arrived 29 December 1942 - Boston Navy Yard
Request 305, arrived 3 July 1943 (main engine repairs) - Boston Navy Yard
Request 326, arrived 20 September 1943 - Boston Navy Yard
Request 342, arrived 28 October 1943 - Boston Navy Yard

Still Unknown:
HMS Manchester (Philadelphia Navy Yard)
HMS Orion (1941 Mare Island Navy Yard) HMS Argonaut (1943) HMS Birmingham (Norfolk Navy Yard, July-November 1944)

February 21st Visit to USS Arizona

I was in Hawaii last week, and as regular visitors might know, a visit to Arizona:

One of Arizona's anchors with the Memorial between a fluke and the stock.

Above: Memorial from the Visitors Center shoreline with the Ford Island control tower in the background. Below: Approaching the Memorial by boat; Battleship Missouri in the background.

We timed our visit perfectly to catch the nuclear aircraft carrier Stennis CVN-74 departing Pearl Harbor and rendering honors. I was the last off the boat, which left me in a good position to shoot this quickly from the entrance (even though they said to wait until we were in the memorial). A second after I shot this, you could hear "salute!" come from the Stennis' loud speakers. Thank you to the crew for a fine example of the continuing respect Arizona is given.

The wind was fresh, making it difficult to get good shots of Arizona's oil. Tide was headed out to sea.

Working from Stern forward; Barbette #3 with some of the ventilator shafts visible closer and under the surface.

Casemate 10's outline can faintly be seen here on the starboard side, just forward of the forecastle/main deck break at Frame 88. Biths and Chock outboard at deck edge:

The remains of turret #2 just break the surface, looking towards Battleship Missouri. Wind rippled, yet peaceful water that over 1,100 sailors rest eternally underneath.

Stennis had been partially turned around by the time we needed to line up on the rails and loomed large in the openings.

We visited Battleship Missouri the next day and a rainbow was visible from the bridge, connecting the Memorial to the Visitor's Center. A fitting Hawaiian Islands tribute.