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Old 4th January 2010, 17:41
niallc niallc is offline
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Re: Technical drawings at archives

Hi Stefaan
The National Archives at Kew is essentially a government archive i.e. mainly contains material created by the government and its ministries and agencies. As such it has very little material of the type you describe, although occasionally you’ll find an odd drawing attached to correspondence with the Air Ministry about, say, an aircraft modification. Surviving MU records tend to be just ORBs and aircraft output reports.
Most drawings would have stayed with the aircraft’s manufacturers and indeed Westland, BAE at Brough and Adwest (Miles) still have (some of) them. Others have subsequently their way into Museums: The RAF Museum at Hendon holds drawings of some Gloster, Fairey, Bristol and Sopwith types together with some 50,000 Supermarine drawings which were due to be burned. Fortunately a Supermarine employee got in touch with the museum just in time. When Handley Page went to the wall a consortium including the RAF Museum and the IWM bought a lot of historical material from the receiver and I think the drawings went to the IWM. Other museums such as Brooklands, Solent Sky and, I’m sure, others also have some of this sort of material.
I’m sure others know more, but hope this helps.
Niall
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