Mission building resources

[Marabekm]

Hello all.
I am interesting in building missions and looking for some resources to do so.
USAAF, RAF, and Luftwaffe seem easy enough to find. Also was able to locate info on Romanian Airforce, and little bits for RAAF and RNZAF. And have some good books for IJA/IJN.

But does anyone know any good resources for the Regia Aeronautica, Hungarian, Slovak, VVS, or Finland.

Also any info on major battles and campaigns fought for these countries as well.\, would be appreciated.

It was a big war and I wish to make at least one or two missions for all involved

[dimlee]

Wiki (despite all criticism) is good place to start, IMHO.

[Marabekm]

Wiki (despite all criticism) is good place to start, IMHO.

Wikipedia is a good tool for general ideas, but its usually good to try and back that up with some other research.

[dimlee]

Regarding VVS only: there were good books written by Christer Bergstrom, Black Cross/Red Star, in three volumes. They might seem a bit outdated today (there were factual errors, especially in vol.1 and 2), but still remain classic. Many air battles of Eastern Front are described there.
http://www.bergstrombooks.elknet.pl/bc-rs/

[Marabekm]

Thanks dimlee. I will have to check those out.

[Pursuivant]

For Orders of Battle (i.e., what units were present during a particular battle), this site is outstanding:

Nafziger orders of battle collection : finding aid.

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4013coll11/id/1277

This site is nothing but historical Orders of Battle - some of which are quite detailed. If you get lucky, you get great tactical scenario design info like number and types of weapons assigned to a particular unit.

The other digital resources in the CARL collection might also be useful, but I haven't had a chance to explore them yet.

Searching by specific unit will usually bring up useful information. There are WW2 aircraft and Axis history forums which often have useful threads by area specialists. Given the obsessive and nit-picking nature of historians and war game geeks, if there are errors in these threads, they're at least errors that reflect the current conventional wisdom!

Archive.org often has useful web pages which have otherwise been lost. That's good for chasing down links which otherwise return "404" or "This domain is for sale" results.

Many Air Forces maintain official history sections, as do many National Archive sites. They're good for (mostly) accurate if incomplete summaries of things like unit histories and equipment.

The real trick is discovering exactly which model of aircraft a unit was using, exact unit strengths (especially planes available vs. official strength), supply condition, and pilot quality. For example, it's easy to discover that, say, JG 1 was involved in the Battle of Britain, and that it was equipped with Bf-109s, but a pain in the ass to discover little gems like, "mostly still equipped with Bf-109E-1 as a of July 1940, 1 Staffel equipped with Bf-109E-4", "pilots mostly veterans of the Polish and French campaigns, with a few with experience in the Spanish Civil War", or "just 15 planes flyable on July 15".

[Pursuivant]

Wikipedia is a good tool for general ideas, but its usually good to try and back that up with some other research.

Wikipedia is an excellent source for bibliography. Check the footnotes at the bottom of the page and click on the links.

[Pursuivant]

Specialist history forums, good for discovering obscure facts.

WW2 Aircraft Forum
https://ww2aircraft.net/

12 O'Clock High - another WW2 Aircraft forum
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/index.php

Warbirds Forum - another WW2 Aircraft forum

http://www.warbirdsforum.com/

Axis History Forum - Good for information on minor Axis allies, as well as Germany, Japan and Italy.
http://forum.axishistory.com/

WW2 Weapons
http://ww2-weapons.com/

WW2 In Color - Mostly a picture site, but good for getting a sense of what airbases looked like, possibly exactly what equipment was used.
http://www.ww2incolor.com

WW2 Database
http://ww2db.com/index.php

History of War - Not as well indexed as it could be, but a good source for general unit and campaign histories, as well as equipment.

http://www.historyofwar.org/index.html

Hyperwar: Hypertext History of the Second World War - military manuals, orders of battle, official histories, etc. but mostly from a US perspective.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/

Aeroflight - A comprehensive aviation site which covers both current and historical aviation around the world. It's a good starting place for information about historical air forces, airfields, aircraft, etc.

http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/

For Minor Air Force Orders of Battle, including some obscure info, this site is quite good. It's also good for potential scenarios, since it was created by a wargamer for a tabletop air war game.

WW2 Minor Power Air Forces
http://world.std.com/~Ted7/minoraf.htm

WW2 Ace Stories - Collection of stories about aces of all nations.

http://www.acestory.elknet.pl/

Air Aces - a comprehensive list of Aerial victories, sorted by nation, Air force, war, etc. Good for pilot pictures, units, etc.

http://aces.safarikovi.org/

Aces of WW2 - another Ace site, but less comprehensive than the one above.

http://acesofww2.com/

Air Aces Homepage - yet another Ace site

http://users.accesscomm.ca/magnusfamily/airaces1.htm


For Finnish AF Ops, this site is quite good. Some articles are in English, otherwise Google Translate is "sort of" your friend.

http://www.virtualpilots.fi/

For Regia Aeronautica

Stormo!
http://www.stormomagazine.com/

Aerei della Regia Aeronatica

http://www.finn.it/regia/

Commando Supremo - Italy at War
http://www.comandosupremo.com/regiaaeronautica.html

Hakans Aviation Page - Biplane Fighter Aces from the Second World War - Also good for Finnish, Hungarian, and Chinese - basically any AF which used the Gloster Gladiator and/or the Cr.42.

http://surfcity.kund.dalnet.se/

Excellent Luftwaffe site, which sort of helps with Minor European Axis Nations.

The Luftwaffe 1933-45
http://www.ww2.dk/

For France:

France 1940 - mostly Battle of France, but some later war stuff
http://france1940.free.fr/

For Japan:
Nihon Kaigun - Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet - For Japan - especially the IJN
http://www.combinedfleet.com/

J-Aircraft - anything related to Japanese aircraft
http://www.j-aircraft.com/

VVS:

VVS Research Page
http://mig3.sovietwarplanes.com/

War Is Over - Aviation in WW2 - Also click on Russian version of the page and use Google Translate to try to get more info.

http://www.wio.ru/ww2a.htm

Lend-Lease Air Force - US and UK Lend-Lease Aircraft used on the Eastern Front. Also click on Russian version of the page and use Google Translate for more info.

http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/index.htm

War By Air Force - An IL2 server site with some good historical articles.
http://war.by-airforce.com/index.html