Book is still in progress and running hot and cold (mainly due to work and other projects. I could put it out "now" but I'd like at least one more archives trip and they've been closed since the pandemic started....
Current status is heavy work on the
air group histories. I did proof-of-concept with
Essex but wasn't really happy with the results and decided to expand it a bit, which I tested with
Independence (I know, not Essex class but I was working with Dragon on the 350th kits at the time). Started with the weekly summaries of aircraft, that wasn't always detailed enough or reliable, so I started going through ship war diaries, but some ships were better than others, so I started going through squadron war diaries......
I gotta sit on some stuff so there's still interest in the book but I do not want to impede anyone's builds so I'll always answer questions if I can; I just might not back it with photos.
Problems with links not working are what we call "link rot" and have to do with the age of some of the posts. Web sites go offline or switch to a different back end that changes the address of pages and they don't usually leave forwarders.
I don't have any super photos of the actual elevator wells. Hangar bay in general has less photos than the flight deck because it's less "sexy" and the elevator even more so, it seems. The clearest shots I can recall weren't even that helpful as they documented one of the ships fire-fighting efforts and mostly showed a pit filled with black water. Plans will show you the auxiliary elevators, which can be used somewhat to hide lack of detail - at least with the aft elevator.
_________________
Tracy White -
Researcher@Large"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-
Barbara Tuchman