Friday, April 14, 2006

Brian Downey's Antietam maps

Today's posting on Brian's blog mentions a wonderful Antietam campaign map project he's working on--daily operational maps from September 4-20. I am impressed with the detail and the beauty of the maps and have a deep appreciation for this comment of his:

As I have been plotting units, though, I’m finding there are far more of them than I’d read of previously, and the neat orders of battle with which I’m familiar are of less and less help. Local militia, orphaned cavalry detachments, signalmen, state troops; not to mention rear-area logistics, supply, and communications points.

The OBs of most campaign and battle histories (even the very good ones) include only the formations present on the "main" subject battlefield, generally ignoring those-- both large and small--that played even significant operational roles at some point in the campaign leading up to the climactic battle.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Drew,

    Thanks for the kind words about the maps and for commenting on bAotW, too.

    I've been missing so much of the subtle detail surrounding Antietam-the-Event. This is an exercise in trying to pin some of it down.

    You're quite right about the usual OoBs - let's see if we can get past that for Sharpsburg. In my lifetime :)

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  2. Keep up the great work! As a "map nut" I look forward to seeing the updates.

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