NASM Garber Holdings - aircraft drawings

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'Clock High!:

Todd Anderson
how many factory drawings are left
Fri Mar 15 17:48:02 2002
12.32.68.100

Hello all,

The other day I sat down and started going through variuos publications looking for original factory drawings of parts of aircraft. I was looking mostly at the Me-110 books I found about 4 drawings . That brought up this question. How much of the original drawings are left? I have seen some one the Me323, Me262, but not a whole lot else. Could someone enlighten me on this subject.

Thank you in advance
Todd Anderson
bigtodd@ctc.net

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Artie Bob
Factory drawings
Sat Mar 16 01:02:58 2002
63.189.238.64

There are "factory drawings" and Factory Drawings. What I mean is that most of what you see in publications might be general arrangement drawings which originated from the different manufacturers. These are nice for modeling and getting a general idea of what an aircraft was like. This type of drawing exists for most Luftwaffe types I have ever taken the time to run down (exception Hs 127, has anyone ever run across these?). These were used for sales pitches, training, studies, etc. Airplanes are not built from such "factory drawings". The real Factory Drawings that were used to build a/c at that time consisted of thousands of small part drawings, followed by sub-assembly and assembly drawings in a number of levels. there was also a great deal of manufacturing process documentation on machining, welding, etc.etc. Much of this material is missing, but a lot, millions of pages exists in both hard copy and microfilm form (IMHO probably about 50% of the original material), you just have to search for it at the various archives.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Todd Anderson
factory drawings discussion
Sun Mar 17 00:42:55 2002
166.82.22.98

Artie,

Thank you for your response could you enlighten me a little more on what archive to look in? I have a growing fascination on this subject.


Todd

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Artie Bob
German manufacturing documents
Sun Mar 17 12:43:17 2002
63.190.238.223

In the USA, probably the best place to start is the microfilm of captured German documents at NASM, Garber facility. My guess is those films cover only 10-15% of the actual documents held, which were returned to Germany many years ago. In Germany, some of these are in BA, but also some were apparently returned to survivor organizatins of the WWII companies. A lot went to GB, I have not done research there, but the PRO is the place to start. As noted below, there are some in France and probably quite a few in Russia (which are apparently virtually impossible to access). Note that there are new production replicas of both Me 262s being built in the USA and Fw 190s in Germany. I believe the 262s are reverse engineered to a large degree, but possibly the 190s are built from factory drawings. License production of various Luftwaffe types was also undertaken in Spain, what is now the Czech Republic, etc. How much survives is a real question mark. If you really want to go into the subject, try looking at the archive groups net site at Stormbird.