Geoff's Search Engine for ww2

Is there a similar search facility for WW1

 

Geoff, Your search engine was suggested to me by Kyt at WW2 Chat and I just want to say what a fantastic service it is. At last I now have the means to search the CWGC more effectively. It is sad that only a handful of those killed in the war have their names recorded on the POS St James Memorial. With your SE, I hope to compile a list of all Trinidadians – specifically -, and West Indians, generally, with the intention of presenting same to the folks at City Hall so see if somehow these names can be placed on or near to, our Cenotaph (which record only WW1 casualties). Again, a big thank you.

Good for You! I saw some Caribbean searches in the log file and wondered who was searching for these. Welcome to The Forum.

geoff

 

Is there a similar search facility for WW1

perhaps.......

 

I wish your search engine had been around when I started my research on Reconnaissance war dead. I found more using it.

Cheers
Paul

 

Have been researching my Grandad's Tunnelling Company (175) and the Engine was superb in finding all those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Cheers

Steve W.

Getting my Search Engines confused! Of course, I used Geoff's 14-21 to find the info.


Steve W.

 

perhaps.......
Still using that enigma machine, Geoff?:mellow:

 

Still using that enigma machine, Geoff?:mellow:
Jim, You mean the machine where posts mysteriously disappear? No stopped using that machine

 

Geoff, I know your WW1 search engine is much missed. I do hope it will return one day?

 

Geoff, I know your WW1 search engine is much missed. I do hope it will return one day?

Glad it was still working for my research. Would have been a hard slog without it.

Steve W.

 

With no disrespect to Geoff and his good work, a proper search facility is something that really should be provided by the CWGC, not an individual outside the organisation. I realise that it was probably CWGC's woefully inadequate search functionality that spawned Geoff's idea in the first place ("Necessity is the mother of invention").

I don't wish to denigrate the CWGC here; they are obviously a very worthwhile organisation. I'm just trying to understand why the CWGC don't upgrade the search facility. Is it because it has a lower priority compared to other work that they do? Are they worried that new search capabilities will increase the usage of the site to the point where it becomes overloaded? Are they concerned that making the data more accessible will somehow reduce their control over it, i.e. people making copies of large portions of it? Perhaps a combination of these. All of these things can be addressed.

Let's hope that, with their recent survey, sufficient people identified the importance of improvements in this area for the CWGC to take notice.

regards,
Martin

 

With no disrespect to Geoff and his good work, a proper search facility is something that really should be provided by the CWGC, not an individual outside the organisation. I realise that it was probably CWGC's woefully inadequate search functionality that spawned Geoff's idea in the first place ("Necessity is the mother of invention").

I don't wish to denigrate the CWGC here; they are obviously a very worthwhile organisation. I'm just trying to understand why the CWGC don't upgrade the search facility. Is it because it has a lower priority compared to other work that they do? Are they worried that new search capabilities will increase the usage of the site to the point where it becomes overloaded? Are they concerned that making the data more accessible will somehow reduce their control over it, i.e. people making copies of large portions of it? Perhaps a combination of these. All of these things can be addressed.

Let's hope that, with their recent survey, sufficient people identified the importance of improvements in this area for the CWGC to take notice.

regards,
Martin

I like many others are of the opinion that there should be more availability to information and if we waited for the CWGC to update their search facility (if ever) I for one would have to leave orders in my will for my children to complete my research.

Geoff's search engine has provided information that is required by interested parties now, not five or ten years from now.

Without Geoff's search engine, my project would have been 200+ Australians missing as they joined the RAF and are subsequently listed as UK. Similarly in WW1 the amount of Aussies who joined the RFC, RNAS etc and listed as UK, is over 40.

With the correct information in hand, a great majority of those headstones/memorials have now been photographed and catalogued.

Geoff's search engine is a wonderful tool that is assisting people now!

 

Geoff's search engine is a wonderful tool that is assisting people now!


Spidge
I'll drink to that mate !

Martin
As one of the early ones on this site to recognise the pure gold of Geoff's search engine I can only re-iterate what others have said already.

I'm reasonably certain that in the fulness of time the CWGC will eventually update their search facilities and even, if they are sensible, incorporate some of the beautifully thought out ideas developed by Geoff.

Until that time, however, I shall continue to use both search engines and good luck to both Geoff AND the CWGC

Ron

ps
If only Geoff's search engine had been around before I made my "Return To Cassino" trip ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/86/a4062386.shtml
I could have visited all the 49th LAA grave sites.

 

Spidge.

There doesn't seem to be many names, in total, in the AWM's Commemorative Roll. Using the advanced search, a search on each service for all conflicts (no names), returns the following totals:

Allied Forces = 20
Australian Munitions Workers = 45
Australian War Workers = 18
Civilians = 0
Merchant Navy = 829
Other Forces = 7
Photographer = 0



That's only a total of 919. Why so few, I wonder?

regards,
Martin

Hi Martin,

That is my frustration! Through Geoff's search engine, it extracted the 200+ names from WW2 in the RAF alone.

When I feed these into the CM they in 80% of the time return a response. Similarly with WW1 airmen deaths.

The CM was based on people nominating those Australians who died whilst with other allied forces. The names not coming up means (I gather) that they were not nominated for listing.

As I said, the MN deaths are all there, why not the rest?

With Geoff's SE, I searched using "Australia", "Victoria", "New South Wales" etc to achieve my results within RAF however those on the CWGC site that do not have a relationship mentioning one of these place names are missed.

Cheers

Geoff

 

Spidge, Ron.

I agree 100% with your comments on Geoff's search engine for WW2. It's fantastic, absolutely no question. But it's not available for the whole of the CWGC's repository. And what if the same affliction that has taken the WW1 search offline occurred in its WW2 counterpart? All I'm saying is that, in the long term, it's something that the CWGC need to take ownership of and improve. Having said that, I appreciate what you're saying about instructions in your will, Spidge . I'm probably wasting my breath - but thought it worth a mention.

regards,
Martin

 

Spidge, Ron.

I agree 100% with your comments on Geoff's search engine for WW2. It's fantastic, absolutely no question. But it's not available for the whole of the CWGC's repository. And what if the same affliction that has taken the WW1 search offline occurred in its WW2 counterpart? All I'm saying is that, in the long term, it's something that the CWGC need to take ownership of and improve. Having said that, I appreciate what you're saying about instructions in your will, Spidge . I'm probably wasting my breath - but thought it worth a mention.

regards,
Martin

Martin,

When all is said and done the CWGC should move into the 21st century and make the Commonwealth deaths available in all forms for research.

They should just hire Geoff, pay him €100,000 and voila!

 

Spidge, Ron.
I agree 100% with your comments on Geoff's search engine for WW2. It's fantastic, absolutely no question.

Thanks!:wub:
But it's not available for the whole of the CWGC's repository.

Do you mean the records I have not been able to capture, or the pre-1914, 1922-1938 and post 1947 records, also the foreign nationals in their care. Also Boer war graves soon I presume.
And what if the same affliction that has taken the WW1 search offline occurred in its WW2 counterpart?

Is there an affliction? Tell me more.

All I'm saying is that, in the long term, it's something that the CWGC need to take ownership of and improve.

Lets see what happens here.
Having said that, I appreciate what you're saying about instructions in your will, Spidge . I'm probably wasting my breath - but thought it worth a mention.

I just found out the 1931 census was destroyed, bad news for future WW2 researchers. I don't know if I will still be around then (2031) but no use putting this in your will.

regards,

geoff
(busy processing 65 gigabytes of data)

 

But it's not available for the whole of the CWGC's repository.

Do you mean the records I have not been able to capture, or the pre-1914, 1922-1938 and post 1947 records, also the foreign nationals in their care. Also Boer war graves soon I presume.


WW1.
And what if the same affliction that has taken the WW1 search offline occurred in its WW2 counterpart?

Is there an affliction? Tell me more.


I was referring to the hiccup, gremlin, technical hitch, bug, whatever it was that took WW1 offline.

regards,
Martin

 

WW1.




Force Website Annual Report Search Engine
==========================================
Canada 64972 64967 64648
India 74189 74181 74039
Australia 61923 61933 61888
NZ 18051 18051 18047
S. Africa 9479 9479 9458
UK 837630 886185 828666

Now there is an interesting point. The website figures were obtained from the CWGC search page, by entering a nationality and year. They agree very well to the figures given in their annual report, except for the UK figure which is significantly different. It could be there is a bug in the CWGC search when a year is entered, but why should it only be for the UK numbers?

Other than UK and this discrepancy, my search engine figures are close. Canada is next worse in missing 324 records.
I've no idea where they are, they are not stored in a sensible order.

The numbers they give must also include ALIAS records, these seem to be mostly UK and are around about 0.3% or for every 1000 UK casualties, 3 served under an alias. So I guess these numbers, at least for UK, should be reduced by 3 per thousand - since ALIAS are stored as two records.

I was referring to the hiccup, gremlin, technical hitch, bug, whatever it was that took WW1 offline.

I think it was a technical gremhichitchbug, but should be sorted soon.
I'm in the middle of a big update, but the massive amount of data is stressing out my Window$ system. It is when you do extreme processing you find out its a terrible operating system.

(the code box was an experiment to get tabulated text, which no forum software seems to offer?)

regards,

geoff

 

Doesn't stop the odd glitch in cwgc records. My numbers didn't add up between 1, 2, 2 Armd, 3 Bns IG and those undesignated - eventually pinpointed this guy, really will have to ask cwgc what that's about ...
001 BUCKLEY. RP, 2725770, 5TH BN , 02/05/1945


Hi Dianne,

There are thousands of corrections made each year to the on-line database. I'm not sure how much this is a WW1 or WW2 problem, I think mostly WW1.
They should correct records if you give the appropriate evidence, but in many cases they can check the paper record to see if its a transcript error, it usually is.

(just starting to re-build my WW1 database from raw data. Estimated run time is around 7 hours. The hard drive is thrashing like mad, hope it makes it! And I'm sorry for my contribution to global warming)

geoff