Some Other Sources of Information about Indvidual Soldiers, Ships, Aircraft, etcThe following sources emphasize names of individual servicemen, ships and aircraft, etc., rather than narratives of historical events or descriptions of weapon systems, (much like my database on this site). The People of our WarsThe VA ListThe largest database I have found about American war veterans is the Department of Veterans' Affairs gravesite locator on the Web at VA List This site lists millions of veterans from all wars who haved died and are buried in the U.S. It doesn't list nearly all veterans who have died, but has a lot of them, maybe 8 million.
The Civil War-National Park ServiceThe National Park Service, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, is responsible for maintaining the national battlefield parks, such as Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. Part of its coverage of the Civil War is a database on the web, called Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System. Using this web site, one can find an individual soldier by name, or all of the soldiers with the same last name (there are 71,202 Smiths), or a list of the soldiers in a given regiment. It also contains much other useful infomation about the Civil War. It includes a lot of duplications, especially different spellings of the same soldier's name, but it is still an outstanding resource, at National Park Service Civil War Database
The American Battle Monuments Commission
Veterans who died during World War I and World War II and who are buried overseas in the ABMC cemetaries are listed in their web site. All American military personnel who died in the Korean War are listed at the website of the Korean War Project, a Dallas-based organization devoted to that war. Go to Korean War Project. Names can be found either by individual name search or by state of residence. Vietnam War, The National Archives sourceAmerican military who died in the Vietnam War are listed at the web site of the National Archives and Records Administration. (Korean War deaths are also listed there, but the Korean War Project provides more information about those people.) The National Archives site is Vietnam WarShipsThe Navy's Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships is the primary authority for the named ships of the U.S. Navy throughout America's history. It covers all of the named ships of the Navy, plus the LSTs. The Dictionary contains extensive amounts of information about the ships that it includes. It does not cover unnamed vessels, such as the PT boats, LCI,s or LSMs. It also does not cover the many commercial vessels, such as most of the liberty ships, that were used by the Navy in World War II and other wars, and it does not include the many Army vessels. It is also becoming increasingly dated. It is still a treasured source for what it does contain, however. It was published by the Government Printing Office in eight volumes, and should be available in most major libraries. It has never been sold in commercial book shops, and is now out of print. Individual volumes can probably be obtained via the Web. This comprehensive publication is now also available on line. See "Military History Centers", below. A valuable source of information about the Navy's ships that participated in World War II is Samuel Eliot Morison's classic 15 volume series "History of United States Naval Operations in World War II." In addition to providing an extensive narrative history of the Navy's participation in that war, these volumes provide, both in the text and in appendices, information about the order of battle of the opposing forces, including the commanders of the organizations and the larger ships. An example is Volume XII, "Leyte" that shows the ships and commanders that participated in the Leyte landing and necessarily in the following "Battle for Leyte Gulf", along with the opposing Japanese forces. Volume XV of the series lists all of the named American Navy ships that participated in the war. These books were originally published in the late 1940s and 1950s, and are out of print. However, either the original Brown and Little editions or later cheaper reprints should be available in the used book market. Aircraft and MissilesAn excellent source of data about the U.S. military and naval aircraft is Joe Baugher's web site. It is jbaugher. Joe's site shows Army/AirForce aircraft by serial number and Navy/Marine Corps aircraft by Bureau Number. They are listed in Serial Number or Bureau Number sequence in groups, but information about a great many individual craft is included. It also includes drones and missiles. Military OrganizationsArmy units that participated in the various campaigns of World War II and the Korean War are listed in Department of the Army Pamphlet 672-1. This thick publication shows each of thousands of units in numerical order. It is available on the Internet at DA Pamphlet 672-1. The full title of the document is Unit Citation and Campaign Participation Credit Register. Printed out from the web, it runs over 500 pages of small print. Two volumes are particulary good comprehensive sources of the Army Air Force units in World War II. They are:1. Air Force Combat Units of World War II, and 2. Combat Squadrons of World War II. Both are edited by Maurer Maurer and published by the Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF. The first covers units above the squadron level and the second, as the name implies, covers squadrons. Both provide information about the history of the organizations, their commanders, and their insignia. They were published in the 1960s and can probably be obtained only through the used book market. About the Civil War, including the participating regiments and battalions, much information is provided by "The Civil War CD-ROM." This product includes "A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion", by Frederick H. Dyer, and some other ancient but invaluable sources.
Military TerminologyThis database provides quite a few terms and code words, including code names for operations in various wars, especially World War II. However, the authoritaty on military terms currently used by the U.S. Defense establishment is a document called "Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms", Joint Publication 1-02. It may be printed out from the web site, but it is a large volume, over 750 pages. For those readers who are familiar with DoD from a few years back, this used to be called JCS Pub 1. Now its short title is Joint Pub 1-02 or JP 1-02. To see it, go to MIlitary Terms
Military History CentersEach of the military services has its own organization devoted to studying, and providing information about, its history. Each is primarily for the benefit of its service's own officers, to help them learn their profession better, but much of the information is available to the public. The Army's Center of Military History is located at Fort Lesley J. Mc Nair in Washington D.C. Its web site is at U.S. Army Center of Military History The site has several publications on line, as well as descriptions of many others that it has published over the years. The site shows the history, honors and lineages of many of the Army's distinguished units. It lists all of the Medal of Honor winners of all services, and has a list of the Army's various museums around the country. The Navy's source of historical information is the Naval History & Heritage Command, located at 805 Kidder Breese St., SE., Washington Navy Yard, Washington D.C., 20374-5060. The Command's web site home page is Naval History & Heritage Command. The site contains a great deal of information about its publications, the Navy's museums, and other subjects, but probably its most widely useful product is its Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS), originally published in eight hard bound volumes, but now available on line at Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships The Marine Corps History Division is located at 3078 Upshur Ave., Quantico VA, 22134. Its web site is at Marine Corps History Division That site contains excellent biographical sketches of many prominent Marines, as well as narratives about the history of the Marine Corps, the texts of documents that are important to Marine Corps history, and links to other sources. The Air Force History Center at Maxwell AFB Alabama also has a web site. |