Adding Chronology of VPB-118 To Site

I started a chronology of the squadron a few days ago. I am only adding a paragraph or two a day because I have to synopsize the book which involves a little editing and writing on my part. Please check back to see how it's going. I plan to continue through until the end of the book and then to link from the crew pages to the chronology so that the text is not duplicated.

By the way, the complete roster of the squadron is now up on the site. An advantage of this is that when relatives try to find their veteran on the internet by using a search engine, everyone is there on one page, with the links to the rest of the site. When I first tried to find my Dad's squadron, this was not possible. Now it is.

Squadron Roster Listing

I added a new page today, with what will eventually include a complete roster of the entire squadron. I am up to Crew 7/13 but I am going by the order in the book so it's not really apparent where I am. Less than half way, I think. However, I have completely realized one goal, which is to get the names of the "ground grippers" on the site for the first time. I wish I had done that a lot sooner. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get the rest of the squadron listed. You can access the new page from the site map or from the heading on the Crews page, where I added a link.

Design Upgrade To Site

Today I added a proper header to the main pages of the website. It's still pretty basic but I think what I have serves its purose fairly well. The sea image in the background is taken from an actual combat photo taken by a VPB-118 crew member; I just used an area of the image with empty sea and changed it from a grayscale image to a blue duotone. I've still got a lot of work to do on the PB4Y-2 crew pages and other lower-level pages to get them all set up with reasonalby standards-compliant HTML but we're getting there. I should start adding some general squadron chronology soon while working on the page upgrades. VPB-118 website

Charlie Hodge

I just got news that Charlie Hodge has passed away. He will be sorely missed. Probably the main reason I was looking forward to the next reunion was my hopes of getting him to tell some more great stories for the video recorder. I still hope to tape some good interviews, but a great resource has been lost.

Conrad Dodl

I was doing a Google search looking for something else, and came across an obituary for Conrad Dodl. Apparently he was suffering from Alzheimer's and succumbed about two weeks ago. The obituary mentioned that he survived the shoot-down of the McCutcheon plane and received a Purple Heart for injuries received. He probably received a DFC and an Airman's Medal also for his service but that is not mentioned. I don't believe that I ever met Conrad at any of the reunions, but I note his passing with respect.

Updated Crews Page

I did a major overhaul of the crews page today. Now you should be able to read the table more easily, plus you can resort the data to search for whatever particular information you may be looking for. (You must have javascript turned on for the sorting feature to work.) I want to do another table like this for crew members but will have to do that in another session.

Status

I'm still working on the 118 website. However, what I'm working on now is a proper header for the various pages. I've been bothered by the lack of an actual header so am trying out some ideas. Hopefully I'll be putting something up on the site in a while.

Maybe in the mean time I'll update the formats on the crew pages; they still are set up with table-based layouts. I also am planning on switching the scrapbook images to a nicer format with javascript slideshows. I already know how to do that but the header is more urgent.