Re: Visits in Germany
 

Another source of information relating to foreign visits to aircraft manufacturers are of course the company magazines that were published. Apart from that I guess the best option would be to search archives of the different nations that you're interested in since the parties making the visits would of course file a report. I've seen several such reports in Sweden, both from visits made to aircraft manufacturers and to Luftwaffe units. Since it was intelligence gathering missions they did making drawings of interesting things, buildings etc, most likely because it wouldn't have been polite to pull out a camera and take the photos... :-)

I don't think that it was covered in the general press as you are possibly suggesting, since it wasn't really anything that you would make public.
/Mike

Re: Visits in Germany
 

Not a military pilot, but don't forget Charles Lindberg visited Germany and was given the royal tour by Goering himself and others. He came back to the US convinced the Luftwaffe would beat everybody and said so. He was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer and even spoke to the American Bund at a rally. He was not, of course, but was villified by Roosevelt and the pro-war Democrats, for this and it took him many years to put that behind him. This was part of the reason he went on those "civilian" missions in the South Pacific to teach P-28 pilots how to maximize their range.

Re: Visits in Germany
 

I am afraid that it would be quite hard and unfeasible to search through so many archives, some of them being incomplete or unaccessible. That is why I have asked on the forum in the first place. Still, I think that any such visits must have been covered in some extense for propaganda purposes, even if not all photos were released for public. Demonstration for Lindberg was not the only one, and there must have been hundreds if not thousands of photos taken.
PS When has anti-Lindberg campaign started?

Re: Visits in Germany
 

Well,

Lindberg wasn't only one who were marked as pro-nazi in his environment after came back from Germany. For example, Royal Yugoslav Navy officer Vladeta Petrovic saw some Wermacht maneouvres before WWII, when he officially visited Third Reich to acquire some Do-22 for Yugoslav Naval Aviation. He was so impressed that he wrote official report about that when he came back to kingdom of Yugoslavia. After all he got the characteristics as he was pro-nazi. Peoples simply don't believe that Germans built efficiently war-machine. And, when Kingdom of Yugoslavia had been attacked by Germans, Italians and Hungarians, in April 1941, only one Yugoslav naval aviation unit evacuated to the Middle East under command of the same men - major Vladeta Petrovic and continued their fights against Nazis there in next one year on the aircrafts they came.

Kind regards

Newcomer

Re: Visits in Germany
 

Well, it seems that anyone who was not pro-Soviet or pro-communistic, turned nazi/fascist sympathizer. It would be interesting to learn who and when started campaign against those people. Then again, are there any official photos of Petrovic's visit?

Re: Visits in Germany
 

AFAIK, none of those photos existed. I am also search any trace in german official papers about two Royal Yugoslav AF Avia-Fokker F.39s marked with yugoslav civil registrations in 1940, for the purpose to transported Yugoslav delegation who were travelled to the Third Reich to be present at celebration of Hitler birthdays - 20th April.

kind regards

Newcomer

Re: Visits in Germany
 

Representatives from Brazilian Army Aviation (Aviação Militar) and Brazilian Navy Aviation (Aviação Naval) did two official visits to Germany. One in 1936 and other in 1939. At last one pilot is believed to have flown a Me 109.
Brazilian Air Force was created only in 1941.

Re: Visits in Germany
 

Admiring, as a soldier, the German Army or the Luftwaffe doesn't necessarily mean being a nazi sympathiser. Remember, those days the Army was an apolitical institution.

Re: Visits in Germany
 

I rather mean that people who were not admirers of communism, were and are portrayed as nazi sympathizers despite their actual views.