The What's New Archive

February 1999

28 February

01:24 - Did some work on the U-boat models pages. Added a nice review for the Nichimo type IX model kit and also updated the Model kit page itself.
Added page on German agent landed in Newfoundland in 1942.
Put up a little story about U-boats heading westwards again.
Added Silent Service II to the U-boat Games page
Added information on the loss of U-210.

25 February

17:27 - Added some nice information to the U-338 profile page.
Fixed a small layout bug on the U-456 profile page.
I have slowly been implementing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to selected pages on the site. Don't worry I'll do this very conservatively so that the ones of you not able to enjoy it won't suffer. The upshot is that maintenance might be reduced and better consistency ensured. However CSS is still not fully implemented in your browser so I won't even try anything "fancy" with it for the time being.
CSS reduced the "weight" of this page here by 5kb of code.
Less is more :)

24 February

17:27 - Updated the page on FrgKpt. Victor Oerhn.
Added 2 German books and updated the pages.

22 February

01:24 - Created a nice set of pages on Kriegsmarine Training. This was one of the key elements I felt were missing.

21 February

01:24 - Created a nice page on U-boat models. This page will of course be much bigger with your help as modellers. Fell free to contact me on how to better it.
Added 8 new movie files for a total of 112 movie listings.
Added new a Diving Images photo set to the Gallery. This one has 9 excellent images of the U-352 of the US East Coast.
Today the site grew past 2500 pages!

20 February

17:27 - Did a major revision on the Kattegat map. Updated the positions showing the U-1008, U-2524, U-2534 and U-3523. I also added U-579 and U-2338 to it.

19 February

18 February

17:27 - Finished the data for the U-boat successes. All ships sunk or damaged are now in the database. Now moving onto the next element of the project ...
Added a page on the battle for convoy ONS-154.

17 February

01:24 - Been wasting time trying to explain the concept of uboat.net to a Canadian "history teacher" named "Brian" who's been complaining about "this blatant glorification of German aggression". To him this is just a "duplication of history" and should be stopped.
His version of the U-boat war (presumably what he teaches his students) is that the "German U-boat men volunteered [and deserved] to die".
Yeah, right. Unbelievable from a teacher in 1999.

Added the myth on U-boat refueling in Irland.

16 February

01:24 - Did some work on the U-boat Bases pages.
Updated the map for the Bay of Biscay. Added U-119 and U-663 to it and updated the positions of U-465 and U-332. The map now lists 65 U-boats lost there.

15 February

17:27 - Added a simple page on U-boat related Games. This page will of course be expanded in the near future.

14 February

01:24 - Added 8 new Movie files for a total of 104.
Added some 750 sunken/damaged ships to the database.
Over 3000 ships in there now, getting close to ready ...

13 February

8 February

7 February

01:24 - Most of my time right now goes into the data processing and the design of the SQL database project loosely dubbed "uboat.net Research Center" at this time.
When operational it will ease the development and maintenance of uboat.net considerably and enables me to direct the efforts into more stories and general history.
Don't get me wrong, we're not stopping maintenance of the site for a while, only certain elements like the U-boat profiles are not heavily updated for a while since we've moved that data into the database and will maintain it there from now on.
Greatly updated the profile for FrgKpt. Otto Kretschmer
Added some 550 sunken/damaged ships to the database.
Added 8 new U-boat related Movies, now listing 96 movies.
Created a What's New Archive page for Jan 1999.
Answered some 35 e-mails today.

4 February

01:24 - I'm working very hard on porting much of the information on the site into a powerful SQL database that would enable uboat.net to assist in some very serious and difficult researches when complete. I hope to have this up and running later this spring or early summer.
What would be in this includes (but not limited to)
   All commanders in detail
   All U-boat details (based on the profiles)
   All patrols and sinkings of U-boats.
   ... and much, much more.
This database would be able to handle questions like "I'm looking for a large U-boat that was in Bergen in early April 1944 but left for another port before leaving on patrol off Gibraltar".
Very exiting stuff, such a database does not exist I think.
Updated the profile for U-377.

In addition to the items shown here above we made some 15 additions or changes in our databases during February 1999.