We are looking for contributors, editors, and, board members to help guide the site, and, help shape the feature-set, research objectives, member engagement features, and content.
Anyone can apply, we're hoping to build a group from around the world, from the various countries that supplied pilots to fly the Spitfire (and other RAF types) during WWII.
Our goal is to support memorial projects, by honouring each and every Spitfire pilot. We're not just after the aces, we'd like to document all pilots, where they came from, their story, including their post-war story, if they survived. That will require content sources from museums, archives, family members and others - and that's where we need help. It will also require a fair bit of research.
For example (image top left), we just loaded
Flt Lt H G Harwood (RCAF) to the site, and linked to his Spitfire via a serial number found in segment of book on 126 Wing on Amazon, based on the marking VZ-S in the image. From there, his page now links to the Spitfire page for the aircraft he flew on that day, which in turn gives the full history of the aircraft. This is one of our goals, to create a linkage between pilot and aircraft. Equally impressive, the IWM image showing the aircraft after crash landing is in the public domain, so it's now added to the page. But we don't know anything else about this pilot, where he came from, what else he did, did he survive the war? If so, what did he do afterwards? There are thousands of stories like this waiting to be told, and, it will only happen if users each do a little research in local town archives, National Archives record requests, or by posting information from family records. We'll eventually come up with a list of "pilots under research", a revolving top 10 that users can focus on as a group to help uncoverthe storyline. As a user, anytime you add a pilot, this is reflected on your profile page, and, we know that between Britain, Poland, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, USA and many other countries, there are 10's of thousands of Spitfire pilots. That's a fair project to bite off on, so let's start with that.
If you are an author, historian, curator, or aviation enthusiast with an interest in the Spitfire, please send us a note. We'll be looking to you to help shape the site, and, one day, meet up as a group in London England, where we can put together a tour, a hanger visit, and, do some focused research. Just use the contact Us at the bottom of this page.
Best Regards,
Kurt
