Often when carrying out research, one will come to a dead end with the reference books. Even though they are numerous the books just dont have all the information one needs for completeness. A few years back that would have had to be the end of it unless one was able to travel to other countries and research their records.
But these days I am continually finding that those annoying little missing bits can be found if you are prepared to be patient and do some careful web surfing, using some imagination.
A case in the last few days relates to some of the Soviet auxiliary craft engaged in the Arctic region during WW2. The Soviet Northern Fleet was very short of regular warships and as a result had to make use of many armed merchant craft, particularly trawlers. However all the regular sources and all the lesser known seemed to be full of statements that there were no details known of these ships. No images available etc.
That was annoying because for the second of my Convoy rule books which I have now basically completed, there was no avoiding these ships. Sometimes they were the only escorts or at least made up the bulk of escorts, for movement of ships along the Murman coast and into the Kara Sea etc during the Northern Summer.
I thought at first the only thing to do would be to do a generic drawing and a generic armament based on the very little we do know. But I found that somewhat unsatisfying and almost robbing the potential reader of the real data.
So I set aside a couple of days to do nothing but trawl through all sorts of sites, in a multitude of languages (Thank goodness for my excellent translation program) to see if I could solve some of this lack of data.
At first it was very discouraging. Most sites seem to draw negative conclusions, probably from the normal reference sources I had consulted. So I widened my search away from necessarily Naval sites, to cover exploration in the Arctic during the pre and post WW2 era. I also extended it to commercial fishing, commercial cargo delivery and anything I could think of that may in some way lead me back to the information I sought.
It was difficult and it was frustrating. So many links no longer existed or I could not gain access. Some were very vague and others were just too difficult to navigate. But by the second day I had started to firm up information on at least one group of auxiliary ships and eventually found a photograph. The first I had seen of the group on any site and nothing to do with WW2. But none the less the correct ships because construction data was available and they matched perfectly. Late on the second day I found a couple of Russian sites that referred to operations a couple had taken part in, and one even mentioned the armament. The mention was in passing while discussing the difficulties the ship faced, but none the less it was not only mentioned, but sounded logical because the types matched the sort of guns the Soviets put on such vessels.
I decided two days were not enough and on the third day found a couple of other foreign language references to the ships concerned. By now I had the tonnage, speed, armament and a photograph, plus a fair bit of data on war service.
So using the methods I had already been employing I took the names of some other vessels and did the same thing. This time the information came up much more quickly. I soon had pre war photographs of one class, a hazy post war photograph, and a reference to another site. That site was hard to get in to, but I eventually did through a round about means of going to links that did work and back tracking their links. From that I not only came up with a wartime photograph of the class, but also the battle history of one. A little known fight to the death against overwhelming odds, details of the crewmen involved and again the weaponry.
From there I went to look at the Icebreakers. Again very vague information about wartime equipment and appearance changes, but with patience I was again able to whittle away until I had some photographs, drawings. and descriptions of armament and actions they took part in. Their assistance to convoys and so forth.
Now I guess a lot of people would say it was several days wasted on some fairly insignificant ships. But personally I feel quite satisfied with the result. I can now put images on the damage forms that I know do look like those ships, and I can include a reasonably correct armament.
For the land wargamer, and those involved in air wargames, research information is much more readily available. But those of us interested in naval matters often have to go that extra few steps in order to get things right.
But it is none the less pretty darned interesting and its amazing the amount of material I came across and stashed away for references later. I highly recommend those who love ships to try some deep research. You may be amazed with what you find.
experiments to find a better way to mount aircraft for wargaming.
