One of the fun (maybe) aspects of this work is that you end up incorporating information, then get another source and re-visit what you have already done. As you get another good source, you go round again, except you have to check all your previous sources. Eventually you knock the rough edges off and have a result that incorporates all the information in an accurate fashion and eliminates the errors, contradictions and gaps. Then you get another good lead which tells you something different…!
I started by working through the data in the UK National Records Office (the SSO-1 forms, and associated target damage assessments, around 6000 documents), then reconciled the daily Intops Summary, and started working through all the Bomb Groups’ reels in the Air Force Historical Research Agency records. Next up was to include all the relevant target details from the Bomber’s Baedecker.
In parallel, getting good info on the locations of all targets (from the airfield documents, some industrial research, and poring over maps) and trying to unpick the names and locations of all the V-Weapon sites (that was a delight) helped ensure the Gazetteer improved. Another piece of work was trying to understand what place was really being referred to be a generation that didn’t have access to the internet and on-line maps, and with place names far removed from what they grew up with.
I then spent a year compiling and cross-referencing all the bomber loss data.
As I incorporated the latest of these data sets there was often a ‘better’ way to portray the data, which required adjusting the spreadsheet to make it all coherent.
Alongside all of this, any time there was a contradiction in the data it required reconciling all the primary sources, plus additional sourcing from Bomb Group websites, books, and other sources to try and help clarify the true situation. But eventually I got to the point where I felt it was of sufficiently high quality to be shared. I hope you agree … but it isn’t finished by a long way!