World War II Database

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, a year after I founded the consulting firm Lava Development, LLC., I began building the WW2DB as a public website for Lava to achieve two goals simultaneously: To share my notes with fellow military history enthusiasts and to showcase the technical capabilities of my consulting firm. From this initiative 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. At the same time, with WW2DB being the showcase of Lava Development, LLC., the website continues to receive regular technical enhancements so that the presentation of the historical information is always being enhanced. Although I am proud of this continuously growing site, I do not recommend this site to be used for academic research; the historical information of this site remains no more than the the work of a hobbyist not 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.

The WW2DB Contributors Team

In addition my own notes, this site also contains contributions from the following people whose knowledge, inspiration, and support give me the drive to keep the project going.

Morgan Bell
Alan Chanter
Bryan Hiatt
Thomas Houlihan
Dan K.
Janice Kim
Jimmy Lebel
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, co-founder of Lava Development, LLC., for his technical expertise. There are too many others to name, and I apologize I cannot list them all. As this site grows, I can only say that it is only because of their support.

Copyright of External Material

We made our best effort to determine external materials such as photographs, documents, maps, etc. featured at the WW2DB site are done so without copyright infringements. If you have any questions or concerns in regards to this topic, please contact us.

Some of the external materials found at WW2DB came from great websites such as the following. We highly recommend visiting and supporting these sites below.

Australian War Memorial
German Federal Archives (Das Bundesarchiv)
Hyperwar
Imperial Japanese Navy Page (CombinedFleet.com)
Imperial War Museums
NavSource Naval History
Olive-Drab
Russian International News Agency (RIA Novosti)
United States Air Force National Museum
United States Army Center of Military History
United States Library of Congress
United States National Archives
United States Navy Naval History and Heritage Command
Wikipedia

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