History of WW2DB
My name is C. Peter Chen, I am the founder and editor of World War II Database, and I thank you for visiting this website. When this project started, it was no more than my personal notebook in which I kept notes and copies of photographs about WW2. With a relational database model, I was able to connect people, events, photographs, and other elements of history with ease, and the content of this database quickly grew. In Oct 2004, I began exploring the possibility of sharing my notes over the web, thus born the foundations of the website that eventually opened to the public on 28 Dec 2004.
It has only been several years since the site had been in existence, and the content is still far from complete. I continue to add notes to this website on a regular basis, hoping that visitors will find the information useful and interesting. Although I am proud of this continuously growing site, I do not recommend this site to be used for academic research; this site remains no more than the extension of my own personal history notebook, and it has not been reviewed by any subject matter expert. I urge you to periodically review the Terms of Use for this website for important details.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at this link.
The WW2DB Team
In addition my own notes, this site only contains contributions from the following people whose knowledge, inspiration, and support give me the drive to keep the project going.
Morgan BellAlan Chanter
Bryan Hiatt
Thomas Houlihan
Dan K.
Janice Kim
Andrew Nguyen
John Radzilowski
David Stubblebine
Beyond the colleagues named above, there are also many who had contributed to this website indirectly. My family must be mentioned first, for that they put up with me disappearing into the study sometimes as soon as I return home from work, emerging only after they had gone to bed. I also thank author and historian Jonathan Parshall for fostering my hobby in history into something greater; he had become a mentor and a friend even though we have yet to meet in person. Jonathan Wirch and Eric Tow, too, for they continuously help me perform useability testing and offered various technical and web design feedback. Last but not least, Jack Costantino, who I have only met recently but he had already shown me new perspectives on history that I had not been able to see before. There are so many to name, and I apologize I cannot name them all. As this site grows, I can only say that it is only because of their support.
Copyright of External Material
I make the best effort to ensure all external material such as photographs, documents, maps, etc. featured in World War II Database site are either in the public domain or I have already secured permission to display them. If you have any questions or concerns in regards to the copyrighted material found on this website, please feel free to contact me.
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My Other Sites
In addition to WW2DB, I also maintain other websites. Some of them include:
| cpeterchen.org | My personal website | |
| dev-notes.com | Database and application development | |
| CougarDB.com | 1999-2002 Mercury Cougar registry |
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- » 525 biographies
- » 216 events
- » 517 ships
- » 208 aircraft models
- » 97 vehicle models
- » 203 weapon models
- » 30 historical documents
- » 132 book reviews
- » 7511 photos, 850 in color
Winston Churchill, on the RAF