Winter 2023 Update

It has been over a year since the last update post, and there is a lot to unpack and cover in this post with not a lot of time to do so.  This year, we partitioned a lot of the individual pieces of the website to make it strictly informational and useful to people with interests in history and the art of history.

Elsewhere, while the new headers that were introduced in 2023 were nice, the ones being rolled out now are designed to focus on the content, remove redundancy, reduce load, and work on virtually any screen.  We have also removed headers from showing over the banner, with them showing below instead.  Contributor information will now be displayed at the bottom of each post.  We’ve also started to make unique headers for some of our series posts.

A Spiritual Connection Part II has been in the drafts folder for some time now and should make it to live after over a year of work sometime in the next few months.  This feature will focus on Jack Northrop’s Cold War-era endeavors such as the fly-by-wire system and the Snark Missile.  The third entry into the series will cover the B-2 Bomber and the YF-23.  Finally, the final portion will cover the transformation into the B-21 Bomber and other possible developments in the future.

Lethality in the Skies will also see a second installation covering the history of the F-15 Eagle platform and the mission set requirement that led to its development.  It will also look briefly at the F-15EX program which is the ongoing modern Eagle incarnation.

Lastly, for content, Reaching for the Heavens will see a second installation that covers the British TSR-2 reconnaissance aircraft.  The TSR-2 was the Royal Air Force’s bid to fulfill a strategic reconnaissance mission to complement or function in the place of the American SR-71 and A-12.

Website archiving updates for this period will focus mainly on Sam Berliner’s Atomic Annie website, and some of the connected ordnance information.  Sam’s content was not well organized, and we are having problems sorting through it to compose the commentary and narrative in a meaningful and constructive way.  Meanwhile, we are also attempting to continue work on the 364^th Infantry Regiment page.  Both require some extra care as we continue to work to import them.

Some of the team members are wrapped up in an official digital archiving project that impacts both offline and online resources, so this will take longer than we originally anticipated.  Your patience is appreciated.

Regarding the digital archive system ARCHangel, work is continuing to assess data that needs to be uploaded to it and how to organize and catalog it.  The current proposal is to encourage the support of researchers and academics by endorsing purchase of materials through companies like Amazon for books.  As many documents that can be sourced through the National Archives and Defense Technical Information Center will be linked.  The idea here is to promote research while also practicing responsible information sharing and management.

Fact sheets will continue to be updated and edited for accuracy.  Many require updates to their format and others need to be completed.  The intention is that fact sheets will be available for any content referenced on this website, much like finding content in ARCHangel.

Galleries of images will be updated at some point to better reflect and sort through image types, kinds, and tags.  They also will be updated to use ARCHangel number systems like an archival finding aid.  This is all to make finding things an easier process and to align us closer to an industry standard.  Don’t worry, you shouldn’t notice too many jarring changes in this process.

Retroactive inclusion of sources will take place on select posts and pieces where sourcing is possible.  These won’t be included in publications where the sources aren’t included in the published document.  These will then be retroactively also added to the ARCHangel library for reference later.

Lastly, for quality control, headers and tagging will continue to be a main line of effort as we head into 2024.  Tags by nature are difficult because there can be so many, but an attempt will be made to better organize posts and content into their proper areas and help individuals that have specific interests find information that they enjoy a bit easier.  This is all part of a larger effort to improve the navigation and readability of the website going forward.  In addition, improvements will continue to be made to post headers, mainly to replace older headers and update posts to show the proper format.