Aircraft Inventories

[jswigart]

Has anyone compiled inventories of aircraft using WKr. No's, by type (He-111, etc.) for each specific unit along with the aircraft's actual 4 digit unit ID painted on it?

[Mikael Olrog]

There are quite a number of people working on different types of databases either aiming at listing one individual aircraft type like you ask for or covering Stammkennzeichen or the German civil registrations etc. Usually these it takes many years to compile such a database since there hasn't survived such a database from wartime Germany. Since people invest hugh amount of time and money to create their databases it is not likely that someone would share it just like that. On the other hand many of these people are willing to share information on individual aircraft when specific questions are asked on for example this forum.

There are also different joint collaborations on the web to create databases that could be of interest to you. Representatives of them read this forum and can hopefully tell you more.

[ArtieBob]

Just note that such an inventory would only be valid for one specific moment in time; as the unit , codes (except SKZ), etc. were dynamic and some aircraft moved about quite a bit and quite often (sometimes not always changing codes).

Just to give an idea of the time involved in researching and assembling, my database for a single type has around 15,000 separate a/c identified, most have multiple entries, as many as 50 (in rare cases). With research, data entry and editing, an average of at least 30 minutes per entry seems about right. So you can see where a lot of my spare time has gone during the last 20 years.

Artie Bob

[jswigart]

Mikael and Artie--thanks for the reply! Artie--how did you begin the effort? From a database at the Freiberg archives? Jim