Geoff's Search Engine for ww2

Discussion in 'War Cemeteries & War Memorial Research' started by museumtom, Nov 20, 2007.

  1. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Geoff

    My apologies for short changing your excellent facility, I was not being mealy-mouthed, merely pointing out what I thought was a problem.

    Cheers

    Ron
     
  2. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Old Hickory Recon

    Geoff

    My apologies for short changing your excellent facility, I was not being mealy-mouthed, merely pointing out what I thought was a problem.

    Cheers

    Ron


    ~~~~Always a gentleman.:)
     
  3. debra

    debra Member

    Absolutely breathtaking. You guys are brilliant!!
     
  4. 51highland

    51highland Very Senior Member

    Once I put the correct info in it worked very well. Like Owen I like the fact you can bring up regiment deaths for a date range. Brilliant, thanks, will be very useful.
     
  5. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Geoff
    My apologies for short changing your excellent facility, I was not being mealy-mouthed, merely pointing out what I thought was a problem.
    Ron

    No apology necessary, Ron. All search engines are stupid - and need some getting used to.:rolleyes:

    If anyone is wondering about the top line "Search results for...." - there is a bug somewhere but it did not seem important enough to delay a release.

    Previously, I thought my index was a little short, but forgot to count an important regiment "Civilian War Dead", due to the way these are presented they got lost in the count, but not the index. However it looks like, after a recount, I have about 99% of UK indexed.

    Looks like the next update should be a full forename search.

    geoff
     
  6. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Geoff

    I feel must tell you and others, of my experience this morning on testing out your admirable CWGC Search Engine.

    My Army number was 14300260.

    I decided to enter only the first six digits, i.e. 143002 in the "number" field and see if any one who joined the Army near my time had been killed in WW2.

    The search produced, amongst others a Trooper Fletcher, Reginald Water who died on the 12th of March 1945, is buried in The Reichswald Forest Cemetery and who's Army Number was 14300257.

    Trooper Fletcher's number is just 3 digits lower than mine and he must have joined on the same day, 1st October 1942.

    Truly a case of "There but for the Grace of G-d go I"

    Ron
     
  7. PeterG

    PeterG Senior Member

    Geoff

    An impressive and valuable piece of work! I also tracked back to your The Crypto Barn, an absolute delight to all who are interested in WW2 cryptography and cipher machines.

    I shall link to both in my blog.

    Peter
     
  8. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Geoff, our member raf got me thinking about Black South Africans, I wanted to look up South African Native Military Corps casualties but can't find any.
     
  9. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Geoff, our member raf got me thinking about Black South Africans, I wanted to look up South African Native Military Corps casualties but can't find any.

    Owen,

    They will be added sometime. The current engine only has UK units. This was chosen to get it running, get the bugs out and add any modifications. When it settles down I can add other nationalities. Saves me having to reprocess lots of indexing at every amendment. Should cover all Commonwealth eventually.

    Geoff
     
  10. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    OK Geoff, cheers for that.
    Here's to endless hours of "look ups".
     
  11. Hugh MacLean

    Hugh MacLean Senior Member

    Geoff,
    Just to add my congratulations on a great resource. This is long overdue and will help many. Look forward to when you have the Commonwealth units and Civillian War Dead indexed.

    Best wishes
    Hugh
     
  12. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Geoff,
    Look forward to when you have the Commonwealth units and Civillian War Dead indexed.


    Hugh,

    The Civilian War Dead are already included in this first release. Select 'Civilian War Dead' in the regiment selector.
    It may be during the Christmas break, that I will find time to add more. Who decided to only put 24 hours in a day!

    Geoff
     
  13. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Geoff, I'm wondering if it is planned to include any Irish who may have died in the service of HM's Forces?
     
  14. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    I have just updated the WW2 search engine, it now holds over 99.9% of records indexed - all nationalities.
    Still to add the forename field, this will come some time later.
    What you see running on the server is around 5% of the total software required to get this project running, been quite a journey.
    Things are running slow today, guess the whole world is on-line, took quite a while to get the site updated. Hope it runs OK for you all, hope I have all the bugs sorted :mellow:

    geoff
     
  15. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Geoff, I'm wondering if it is planned to include any Irish who may have died in the service of HM's Forces?

    Enter republic of ireland in the Including field.
     
  16. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Just looked up Swindon War Dead.
    Search results for: + swindon. records found: 352

    Great stuff.
    Edit, ah some are the other "Swindons" not just the Wiltshire one.
    Of course our cousin on the Malta memorial isn't on that search as there is no reference to his hometown on his entry.
    Did find this Geordie lad, Richard Swindon.
    CWGC :: Casualty Details
     
  17. Hugh MacLean

    Hugh MacLean Senior Member

    Nice one - great work and thank you.

    Regards
    Hugh
     
  18. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Just looked up Swindon War Dead.

    Great stuff.
    Edit, ah some are the other "Swindons" not just the Wiltshire one.
    Of course our cousin on the Malta memorial isn't on that search as there is no reference to his hometown on his entry.
    Did find this Geordie lad, Richard Swindon.
    CWGC :: Casualty Details

    A nice example of the search engine minefield.
    You could put swindon in one including field and wilt in the other (wilt will find Wiltshire and Wilts.) However if 'Wiltshire' is missing from some records these will not be found!
    In some cases it may be necessary (advisable) to manualy filter the data, the search engine is a search engine not a database so it may not be 100% correct in the report.
    Your Malta cousin is one of those with no additional place name data in the Info field, not sure about WW2 but the WW1 database has around 50-60% with info. I believe non-UK records (except possibly India) have a higher percentage of additional info data.

    geoff
     
  19. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

    Of course our cousin on the Malta memorial isn't on that search as there is no reference to his hometown on his entry.


    For WW1 (UK), 60% have some additional info and 57% have age given.
    For WW2 (UK), its 75% and 81% respectively.
     
  20. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Hi Geoff

    Have been following this thread with much interest and am an immense admirer of the whole concept of your project.

    One query.

    If I key in to the search box "4th Queen's Own Hussars" I get 182 hits, all men from the regiment who died in ww2 and are in the CWGC records.

    If I try to do the same with the 49th Light Anti Aircraft Regiment I get zilch.
    I understand by now the problems one gets if the search data doesn't "talk" to the data in the actual database so I went back to the CWGC entry for a previously established "found".

    I know one comrade who is buried in Italy, I have in fact visited his grave at Cassino.

    His name is Geoffrey Burnard and on the CWGC site his unit is listed as 49 Lt. A.A. Rgt,
    (Exactly as that, including the spaces).

    Using the same criteria I tried to find other war dead from the same regiment but no joy.

    What am I doing wrong?

    Thanks

    Ron
     

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