This is for the legal department: The below article and websites are presented solely for information purposes and solely represent the opinion of the author. Inclusion of sites and names does not represent an endorsement by Cry "Havoc!", the Military History SIG or American Mensa, Ltd. Inclusion or exclusion of sites does not represent an opinion on the part of American Mensa, Ltd., which has no opinions.
Since the InterNet is the successor of ARPANET, the Defense funded Advanced Research Projects Agency (currently call DARPA) NETwork developed in the late 60's, one would expect a number of military (and military history) sites could be found while web-surfing. One would be right. The amount of information available is staggering and can not possibly be viewed in its entirety. This article describes a few sites where differing degrees of information can be obtained on a variety of subjects. The only thing all sites have in common is that they all pertain to the armed forces, mainly those of the United States,. but others from around the world have also been included. Some contain data on present day events and weapon systems while others are more historical in presentation. The sites listed here are in no way meant to be comprehensive. Rather, they give the reader a number of starting points from which they may launch their own investigations. As with any website the information presented may or may not be completely factual and the web-surfer should seek the data at other sites (and other sources) in order to validate questionable material.
By now most web-surfers are aware of the basic suffixes used for web addresses; .com for commercial, .org for organization, .edu for education, .gov for U.S. government, and .mil for U.S. military sites and that the home pages for the 4 main branches of the U. S. armed forces are:
- http://www.army.mil, (Army)
http://www.navy.mil, (Navy)
http://www.af.mil, (Air Force)
http://www.usmc.mil (Marine Corps)
These sites are extremely stable and are almost guaranteed to be reachable, however, some of the sites discussed below should be considered volatile and prone to change. Indeed by the time this appears in print some may no longer exist. Should this be the case I have included the page title so that the web-surfer can search for its new location with one of the web search tools such as Alta Vista or Yahoo.
THE SITES
ArmedForces.Com
http://www.armedforces.com/thomebase/index.htm
This website lists all military bases in the United States and overseas and is quite an extensive site. The site for each base contains an introduction section, installation, community, education, employment, medical, housing, relocating, support, child services, and survival tips sections. Not all sections for all bases have information, for instance the employment section for the U.S. Military Training Mission in Saudi Arabia has no information. Other sections, however, do have large amounts of information. The data provided under the community section provides an in depth description of Saudi Arabia.
The Center for Defense Information
http://www.cdi.org/
This is a private research organization. One of this website's better sections is the Weekly Defense Monitor, a publication devoted to issues of current importance in the military and political communities. Articles such as "the 21st Century Intelligence and Forecast" or "Iran's Attempts To Go Ballistic: A Status Report" are published weekly and available for reading online. This site is currently still under construction with its "Russian Weekly" section still unpopulated and advertises a "soon-to-be available" database for monitoring arms trades.
CDI's nuclear weapons database section
http://www.cdi.org/issues/nukef&f/database/
This section contains information on major nuclear weapon delivery systems maintained by every nuclear power on the planet. Weapons such as the U.S. Peacekeeper ICBM and Russian SS-25 Sickle to the Israeli Jericho-2 and the Pakistani M-11 are detailed.
The Federation of American Scientists
http://www.fas.org/index.html
This organization is involved in the analysis of global security policies and was founded as the Federation of Atomic Scientists by members of the Manhattan Project.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -Department of Defense
http://www.arpa.mil/
Basic information on the agency's mission and organization can be found here but also a number of interesting items can be found in its "Hot Topics" section. Currently one of the articles is devoted to High Altitude Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(HAE UAV) program and include sections on the Global Hawk and the Dark Star.
University of Kansas History Index
http://www.ukans.edu/history/#military history
This is mainly a simple collection of links to other sites, some of which no longer exist.
World War I
http://www.worldwar1.com/
This is an excellent, well built site with lots of information to keep a surfer entertained for hours. The site includes numerous maps, articles on individuals important in the war, time lines and many other special features. Information on dreadnoughts, and air ships, trench warfare, submarines in many other topics are covered. The user reference section is a good place to start.
Medals of America
http://www.usmedals.com/index.html
This is a commercial site with an excellent listing and display of American military medals by service. The section on ribbons is equally as extensive however the descriptions of the each can barely be read due to poorer quality graphics.
Cook's Collection Connection
http://www2.southwind.net/~aafww2/index.html
Another small site dedicated to the buying and selling of military patches, insignia's, and military medals.
The Military Network
http://www.military-network.com/new_site.html
This is another commercial military bulletin board and contains numerous articles on military oriented current affairs. Past articles are also viewable. This site has quite an extensive set of links to other military oriented Websites.
Department of Defense
http://www.defenselink.mil/
As one would expect this site contains links to all of the major military web sites. The web-surfer may also obtain information here on a number of subjects ranging from the anthrax vaccination program to veterans information.
Gulf War Veteran Resource Pages
http://www.gulfweb.org/
As the name implies this is a website for veterans of the Gulf War and contains various utilities that are of interest to those individuals. Nearly 1400 names and e-mail addresses of veterans can be found in the "Locator" section and there is also a "Live Chat" area. One section that may be of interest to web-surfers is its "Tracings in the Sand" section which contains first hand accounts of the war by over 50 veterans.
The Gulf War
http://www.netwizards.net/~cryan/war.html
This is a site maintained by a private individual and is a collection of facts concerning the Gulf War. There are also a few links to other Gulf War oriented sites.
Gulf War Photo Gallery
http://users.aol.com/andyhosk/gulf-war.html
Unlike the title suggests this website includes more than just photos. This has a first hand account of the Gulf War as told by an artillery officer which details events from pre-deployment to his "homecoming."
Special Forces of the World
http://home3.inet.tele.dk/jdj/spec_ops/
This is a site maintained by a private individual, which contains descriptions of the various country's special force units such as Belgium's ESR teams and the British SAS units. This site is not complete and still under construction, however, it has not been updated in over a year and may be abandoned.
U.S. Army Special Forces: The Green Berets
http://users.aol.com/armysof1/SpecialForces.html
This site, at America Online, is also dedicated to another of the army special units. This site is much larger than most and contains not only the standard history and organization sections but also special sections such as "Special Ops" and "Special Forces (SF) Mythology". The latter explains the meaning of terms associated with Green Berets such as "Hooah!" and "the Coin Check".
U.S. Marine Corps Force Recon
http://www.wlu.edu/~tilitzen/ForceRecon/
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This page describes the marine special forces unit known as Force Recon in some of the missions they have performed over the past few years. These include missions against Iran in 1988 and a description of action that took place in Kafji, Saudi Arabia, during the Gulf War. While these mission descriptions are consistent with the events that took place the surfer should note that many have been posted by anonymous authors.
Website for Defense Industries
http://www.army-technology.com/index.html
This site contains an extensive list of equipment manufacturers for the defense industry and descriptions of everything from ammunition and explosives to ball bearings and clothing can be found here. Since these links do not connect to other companies webpages but are written by the webmasters at army-technology.com the information presented in a consistent, easy to read format. The current projects section discusses everything from the new Russian T-90 battle tank to unmanned aerial vehicles.
MineWeb Home Page
http://www.mineweb.org/
Most of this site is still under construction. However, the mining profiles section gives not only descriptions of the mines and lists of countries which produce them but also lists the countries using them. Images of the mines are included with the descriptions for many and their detectability is also given. Some of the mines included are quite specialized such as the HELKIR "Nap-of-the-Earth" antihelicopter mine.
Chad Eastridge's Chock Full O' Missiles Page
http://pw1.netcom.com/~chadeast/missiles/missile.html
This Page has not been updated for sometime, however, it stills contains basic information on many of the missiles still in use today. This page also contains some links to other missile pages that are still working, such as the Army's Redstone Arsenal Page and a list of air to air victories in Desert Storm.
Ranger Training Brigade
http://www-benning.army.mil/rtb/rtbmain.htm
The U.S. Army Rangers, with their training command located at Fort Benning, Georgia, has a long and distinguished career which date back to before the formation of the United States. The history of this legendary unit is detailed in one section of this site and includes some of its Pre-revolutionary history. Photos of all of the Ranger training classes from 1952 can be viewed. Note that this site gets a lot of traffic and may be difficult to access at times.
Military Equipment Of The Former USSR & Russia Equipment Reference Guide
http://users.aol.com/threatmstr/ptwserg.html
This is a fairly comprehensive site listing most, if not, all small arms, tank, armored vehicles, fire support, air defense, and engineering weapons and equipment used by the former Soviet Union. The site is well put together with photos or drawings of most weapons and summary information.
Encyclopedia of US Military Aircraft
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/
Here, at The University of Western Ontario, is an extensive set of information by Joe Baugher on all types of U.S. military aircraft. This is a substantial website detailing 249 aircraft, each having its own section. The section on the B-17 contains 30 pages documenting its history from it beginnings as the Model 299 to its use by the new nation of Israel to bomb targets in Egypt. Mr. Baugher maintains his home page at http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/ which contains additional information of interest and a vast link list that should be a "must visit" site for military aviation enthusiasts.
Aviation Enthusiasts Corner Aircraft locator - Manufacturer Index
http://aeroweb.brooklyn.cuny.edu/locator/manufact/manufact.html
This is another impressive website. Here the web-surfer first selects from over a 150 aircraft manufacturers. These include not only the well-known manufacturers such as Lockheed and Boeing but also some of the lesser known ones such as GEE BEE and Heath. The planes produced by the selected manufacturer are then listed and the user can view basic aircraft specs and locate which museums have that aircraft in their collections. For instance, the user could determine that the New England Air Museum had a Mead Rhone Ranger. For each museum the webpage gives the museum's location and then lists all of the aircraft in its inventory. This is an excellent page for locating those obscure aircraft the web-surfer may wish to see.
Dimitriy Levin's AirPage
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~dlevin/
Here is more information for aviation enthusiasts with photos of aircraft and their specifications, lists of their manufacturers, engines, and weapons. This site also contains a nice tool for comparing information on two separate aircraft.
Lockheed - Martin photo Archive
http://www.lmco.com/photo/a-z.html
Here can be found images pertaining to various projects worked by these companies. War birds, historic and modern, and space oriented projects can be found in this straightforward list. Some lesser known projects, such as the D-21 augmentation of the SR-71, are also shown. Note that not all of the links are currently active.
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.
http://www.lmsw.external.lmco.com/lmsw/html/index.html
Formerly called the Advanced Development Projects (ADP), the Skunk Works has been one of America's great producers of secret projects. This site contains information such as its history and how the Skunk Works got its name, as well as a review of some of the projects. Please note that this site is rather touchy. Pages of here take a long time to load or do not load at all. For pages that are taking a long time to load hitting the stop button may make it appear. For those that appear to have stopped downloading but nothing appears on the screen try saving the file to disk and then viewing it. Another site dedicated to the Skunk Works can also be found at http://www.careermosaic.com/cm/lockheed/lmsw1.html
Military Aircraft Database
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/gustin_military/
Here is another database listing military aircraft by country. Nothing new here. However, the other two main sections may be of interest. The "Aircraft Markings" section contains explanations of "buzz numbers", "tail codes" and squadron locations. The "Odds and Ends" section contains a number of interesting subsections, such as World War II aircraft loss chart, aircraft nicknames list, and a java based WWII fighter performance comparison chart.
U. S. Air Force Fact Sheets
http://www.af.mil:80/news/indexpages/fs_index.html
This site contains, as with most aircraft related sites, pictures and descriptions of various aircraft used by the reports. Unlike most sites described previously, it contains a space section, describing launch vehicles and systems commonly used by the Air Force.
Air Force Flight Test Center
http://www.edwards.af.mil/
The home page for Edwards Air Force Base is typical of most based Web sites but because of its past may be of more interest to the casual surfer. Check out the "Wings of Time" section which contains historical information on flight tests. There is also a section explaining how the concept of Murphy's law came about at Edward's.
United States Air Force Museum
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/
This is the site for the official U.S. Air Force Air Museum which is located at Wright Patterson airfield. Again the site is primarily devoted to photos and descriptions of various aircraft but also includes some extra information such as the cost of the aircraft. The section on space flight includes descriptions of various lifting bodies and high altitude Balloon Gondolas. The R&D section contains articles on obscure vehicles such as the X-10 and the XF-91, America's first rocket powered combat interceptor.
B-58 Hustler
http://www.highfiber.com/~philrowe/b58stuf2.htm
This website, by Phil Rowe (a B-58 pilot) contains information and first hand accounts concerning the first super-sonic bomber ever built and deployed. One of the pages documents the disposition of every Hustler built. Another includes an explanation of contrails and their potential uses.
X-33 Home Page
http://stp.msfc.nasa.gov/stpweb/x33/
Although this is not directly connected with warfare (yet) the home page for the X-33 may be of interest to space enthusiasts.
United States Naval & Shipbuilding Museum Online
http://www.uss-salem.org/
One of the more outstanding features of this site is the "Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships". Every classification of ship is listed here, everything from battleships and aircraft carriers to yard craft and on classified miscellaneous ships. Under each classification every U.S. naval ship is listed. Ships such as the Clinton, a "screw tug" [I won't say it! - DWT] and the "steam brig" Dixie are even included. Each ship has a page with the history of the ship, from commissioning through service to decommissioning where applicable. The descriptions are quite detailed and even identify the company which purchased the ship for scrap metal. Unfortunately, there are no photos associated with these descriptions. Another section in the Museum is "World Navies Today." The section describes the current status and complement of most navies around the world, including the smaller navies for countries such as Madagascar, Malta and Brunei. This is an excellent site and highly recommended.
The Maritime History Virtual Archives
http://pc-78-120.UDAC.SE:8001/WWW/Nautica/Nautica.html
Here is another large site dedicated to nautical history. Unlike the previous one this site includes non-Naval ship information. Accounts of Shipwrecks and other disasters, information on scurvy, shipbuilding and naval architecture can be found here as well that as photos of ships, and ship models.
National Archives and Records Administration
gopher://gopher.nara.gov/11/inform/dc/audvis/still/navy
This is an early gopher site and some of which the surfer finds here has been transferred to their new website located at http://www.nara.gov/ However, I have not located all of the interesting images that were at the gopher site at the new Web address. Images such as ships165.jpg at the gopher site are quite interesting and depict and early attempt by the United States Navy to develop a submersible aircraft carrier. Until I saw this photo I had thought that only the Japanese with their Kaiten class submarine had attempted this.
U.S. Naval Web Sites
http://www.navy.mil/cgi-bin/sites.pl?-alpha
This is a comprehensive list of links, more than 450, pertaining to the U.S. Navy.
Marine Corps Warfighting Lab
http://www.mcwl.org/mcwl/Home/Home.html
A Web page for a military think-tank created by a former Commandant of the Corps. A number of studies on various urban warfare topics and wargaming information can be found here.
U.S. Marine Corps Fact File
http://www.hqmc.usmc.mil/factfile.nsf/AVE?openview&count=3000
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This site contains descriptions and images of the various aircraft, vehicles, and equipment,used by the Corps. Everything from the F/A-18D Hornet and Saboted Light Armor Penetrator (SLAP) Ammunition to Light Weight Cold Weather Underwear Set (LWCWUS) is documented.
U. S. Navy Fact File
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ffiletop.html
Like other fact files this is mainly a very comprehensive equipment list with photos and descriptions. Aircraft, torpedoes, helicopters, submarines, and ships all have extensive descriptions. Here too can be found links to the Web pages for individual ships.
NavShips History Ring
http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=navships;list
Web Rings are often excellent locations to find sites that pertain to the subject of interest. This web ring organization contains hundreds of rings, each with a short description of the subject to which the ring is dedicated. At this writing this particular ring, the NavShips History Ring, has 108 sites.
The Silent Service Ring
http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=silent;list
Another ring located at www.webring.org. This one currently has 190 sites dedicated to submarine warfare. These rings are good sources of information mainly due to the fact that no one has censored or filtered the list, all sites registered with the ring are shown. The web-surfer can then make the decision as to which sites are preferable over others.
World War II Web Ring
http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=ww2;list
Another web ring, this one with 247 sites catalogued.
World War II Web Site Consortium
http://www.uwm.edu/~jpipes/webconsort.html
A website at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee run by Jason Pipes which purports to maintain links to "only the best World War II sites", (as judged by him, of course).
World War II (1939-1945)
http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/wwii.html
A list of web links maintained by the Information Resource Centre of the Canadian Forces College. Nearly 650 links devoted to documenting the Second World War. These links are divided into subject catagories such as "Personal narratives," "Regimental histories," and "Participation by country." This is an excellent set of links.
U-boat Net - The U-boat War 1939-1945
http://uboat.net/
Dedicated, as one would expect, to the history of the Germany U-boat during the war. The Maps" section shows the locations where subs were lost, each with links to a short history of the boat. The "Fates" section details how these boats careers ended, including sinking by other submarines, scuttling, capturing and internment.
Net's World War 2
http://members.aol.com/aactchrnet/netsww2.html
A set of links maintained by an individual that are divided by major battles and other sections such as "American Traitors", "Atomic Weapons Decision", "Leaders" and "Significant Others". This site may be abandoned, however, nearly every link is still active at this time.
The Drop Zone Virtual Museum
http://www.thedropzone.org/
This site is primarily dedicated to the actions of paratrooper units during WWII in both theaters. All of the web sites mentioned in this article were active at the time of writing and links to them can be found on my personal web site which is located at www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/4397/bet_start2.htm under the "Military" catagory. Happy web surfing.
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© Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz.
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