Historical OOB question

[Mgellis]

Does anyone know of a resource for the US Navy (or any other navy, but I'm especially interested in the US navy) that says where ships were deployed, what squadrons they were assigned to, etc. during certain years? I mean, you would think somewhere there should be a year-by-year order of battle, right? Considering how expensive ships are, one would think they would keep track of that sort of thing, and perhaps even write it down somewhere. And especially for something like the 1980s and 1990s, where it hardly matters where the ships were, since it was 20-30 years ago. So it's not like they need to keep it secret. Right?

 

Mind you, while I'm sure it must exist somewhere, I can't find it. That's why I'm asking if anyone knows. Books. URLs. Anything!

 

Thanks!

 

Mark

[broncepulido]

Does anyone know of a resource for the US Navy (or any other navy, but I'm especially interested in the US navy) that says where ships were deployed, what squadrons they were assigned to, etc. during certain years?

 

The answer is clear: NO (at least on my knowledge today).

 

When I'm designing some scenario I start from my own old notes in ship deployment based in some examples of the very old Military Balance (paper).

Today we have very powerful tools in the web, but some ships deployments are well know and other of the same class not.

I'm doing some years ago Excel tables with numeric ship deployments between 1982 and 1991 or so, and it's the basis for other more detailed research, including individual ship names.

You can see a parallel procedure in this link:

http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?s...ost&p=33481

Basically I think you can start with these links and research about individual story of each individual ships you are interested on:

http://www.navsource.org/archives/06idx.htm (and look for the ship class/individual ships you are interested. Yes, a painful and very long process ).

http://www.navysite.de/ff/index.html (the same procedure, and you can research also some minimum amounts of information in the Cruise Books, habitually with the sailing route of the ship, also some concrete and useful details in individual ships websites (as the superb http://www.okieboat.com/ ).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knox_class_frigate (or the class of ships/individual ships you are interested on. Dont forget to see in the parallel versions of the wikipedia in other languages, mainly Russian, Deutsch, Español, Francais and Polski. As a pair of examples, in the Russian Wikipedia you have very descripted in service life of individual Russian ships, as other more detailed example I've employed it in the individual career of the Sverdlov class cruisers and to determine what concrete Sovremenny class DDG (Otichelnyy) was in the Persian Gulf shadowing the US forces on 18 April 1988, doing also oil tankers escort tasks http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D1%82%...B5%D1%86,_1981) ).

Very important and useful is also this link, about adscription of Russian/Soviet ships to each fleet, and similar stuff:

http://russian-ships.info/eng

For French ships:

http://netmarine.net/bat/listes/flot1982.htm (and the whole http://netmarine.net web site).

http://www.meretmarine.com/

 

Also the very impressive site about US Navy, Carriers, Air Wing and deployments:

http://www.gonavy.jp/

 

And don't fear about unknow foreing languages, I use:

http://www.online-translator.com/ (with virtual Russian keyboard).

 

And all the other ideas or inspirations you can think about it...

 

Incidentally, in my last scenario building efforts, I've used all the aforementioned methods, and the OOB in the Supporting Argentina 1982 or Red Spanish Main 1986, all the ships and planes depicted (and Hurricanes!) were in the theatre zone in the determined time period, or in the case of Russian ships, they can were in the theatre because Northern, Baltic or Black Sea assignation (It must also to determine if some concrete ship/submarine was in drydock/maintenance in the determined time period).

I hope this was useful for you ...

[Mgellis]

Thanks for the links. I knew about a few of them, but definitely not all. As an experiment, I decided to see how long it would take to work up a rough order of battle for a region and time period using the information on these sources...

 

Summer, 1981 (more or less, a few of these are a bit iffy, but probably close enough for scenario design)

Mediterranean

U.S. Forces (probably incomplete, but enough for some scenario building)

Time to research: one hour

 

USS Nimitz (CVN 68)

USS Mississippi (CGN 40)

USS Texas (CGN 39)

USS Biddle (CG 34)

USS WILLIAM V. PRATT (DL-13 / DLG-13 / DDG-44)

USS JOSEPHUS DANIELS (DLG/CG 27)

USS PREBLE (DDG-46) <-- passing through to Indian Ocean

USS PAUL F. FOSTER (DD-964) <-- in Atlantic, Med, and Indian Ocean

USS Elmer Montgomery (DE/FF 1082) <-- a little iffy, but in the Med in late 1980 AND late 1981

USS Archerfish (SSN-678) <-- alternated between New London and Med

 

Air Wing...

VF-41

VF-84

VA-82

VA-86

VA-35

VAW-124

VS-24

VMAQ-2 Det.Y

HS-9

[broncepulido]

Thanks for the links. I knew about a few of them, but definitely not all. As an experiment, I decided to see how long it would take to work up a rough order of battle for a region and time period using the information on these sources...

 

Very well, that's the way ...