We need more like you Eweber, historic info is most welcome!
In regards to the IIA/B, Ubisoft made a boo boo when they named the IIA as the early coastal workhorse. The IIA's (only 6 made) were committed to training vessels once the IIB came along a month later, which gave them maybe 1 or 2 good tours before hand. In fact the IIA's in the game are IIB's and should be renamed. I have tried to do this but it takes a LOT of Hex editing and the new RUB/HT will overwrite this anyway. So I just play with the notion that my IIA is in fact a IIB and stay happy with an augmented IIA.cfg file
Cheers!