How to Research a Historical Campaign

[GrungyMonkey]

I read Jaegermeister's interview with Stormbirds about researching historical campaigns and it got me thinking. With Combat Pilot on the horizon and PTO in the works at DCS, the future for historical digital reenactments look very bright. Add in developments in AI video creation/enhancement, and it's likely that savvy history buffs will soon have many tools for recreations.

I once saw a youtube commenter fluent in English/German reconstruct a timeline of two squadrons' dogfight by crossreferencing the combat reports of each pilot on both sides. I'm fluent in Japanese, and I realized it would be a perfect use of that to completely recreate, for instance, the story of squadrons in Rabaul and Guadalcanal. Ideally using letters to fill in the time outside flight as well.

Of course nothing about that sounds like an easy task, but the biggest thing that struck me reading Jaegermeisters article was my confusion at how he got the information he was using, especially before the internet became ubiquitous. I was raised on the internet, so I don't even know where to start. Are there certain museums to check, books to order, interviews to watch? I know wwiiaircraftperformance.org has flight reports, but that's about it. And I've been unable to find anything similar in Japanese. My general rule is if I can't do something in Japanese, first learn how to do it in English. 

I've thought about starting by piecing together the events of and leading up to Fred Dungan's flight on June 5th, 1944.

Googling his name I found detailed interviews like the one below.

https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/items/show/33169

He mentions firing on some kind of bomber, but can't recall what type. At this point I'd like to read his combat report from the day, and that of his wingman, and find Japanese sources on which planes were present.

He describes killing in a dogfight a skilled Japanese pilot. I really want to know who that was, what his history was, anything, but I'd need a wealth of primary sources to pin that down.

I've also found several articles on that day. They mention a translated quote from one of the Japanese pilots, but I don't know his name, so I can't plug it into Google/YouTube. And if nothing came up, I'd be at a dead end.

I know this has gotten very long, but any advice or resources would be appreciated.

[Major Lee]

In the past, I've contacted the US National Archives and received some very interesting information about the 56th FG in WWII. Historians seem willing to share information with people who are genuinely interested. You might want to try some official government websites in Japan. I found this site below in short order. You might try a cordial approach and contact them regarding information and research. I would bet your fluency in Japanese will help you net good results. Specific requests would probably receive more specific results. Your interest in this topic is commendable and may be very helpful as this sim and its community develop.

https://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/military_archives/index.html