I owe y'all a post....

Things have been busy and progressing... I try and keep myself productive on things that feel like I'm adding something as opposed to just sitting on a couch watching TV. Sometimes blogging feels more like the later, but I need to remember that there is more to getting the word out than just monthly update pages.

Aside from a page I missed when scanning the original report and a caption I cut off, the BB-57 South Dakota battle of Guadalcanal damage report is not finished and ready for consumption. A damage report for CL-62 Birmingham in 1943 has been started but not finished quite yet... tracking for late March or April.

A new section I started on is US Navy WWII Carrier Air Groups organized by ship. This arose out of some work I've done for a book on the Essex class as well as the Dragon CVL model project. Currently it's being used as a format test of sorts for the Essex book, so it's far from full-fledged, but CV-9 Essex has her data for the entire war posted and CVL-22 Independence has all of 1943 posted. There will be lots of tweaks to these two ships before I settle down and start posting other ships, but in the interim if you have any feedback you're more than welcome to drop me a line.

I managed to make it down to the NARA branch in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Like many trips this one ended with not much of what I had hoped to find, but much that was new and important. While I hesitate to consider R@L a damage report site, I find them fascinating for telling how dedicated the US Navy was at not only saving their ships from calamity, but also to learn from each one. So it'll take some work for me to balance out all of the new damage reports I spent about 4 to 4.5 of my five days there scanning in.

Navsource has already started receiving some of the photos I came across, so enjoyment for all!