Air Technical Index documents

[edwest2]

Microfilming of documents began during and right after the war and continued till 1947. Millions of pages were photographed and tons of actual documents were removed. German historians and the Deutsches Museum were in talks with the Americans for decades regarding captured documents. Some were released and it appeared that others were held back due to their classification level. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the Deutsches Museum began receiving some documents but again, some were held back until the end of the 1990s. An example: A highly classified report prepared by the Army Security Agency was not declassified until 2009.

[Steve Coates]

HypersonicAero wrote;

Most of the German documents here are listed with GDC numbers. GDC stands for German Document Centre. This appears to be where the UK organized their captured document collection. For all I know a lot of the documents I'm looking for ended up there, but I have no idea how to check that. I haven't found any indices like the US's desk catalog for that collection.

The GDC material is all held in the Imperial War Museum's repository at Duxford. The holdings are catalogued in a series of index cards. There is no online search facility so there's no real alternative but to visit. I am attaching a very basic note I've written up on the GDC holdings. You're welcome to ask additional questions.

[Steve Coates]

A very useful German archive to search, not least because the archivist, Jessika Wichner has done an excellent job of getting a searchable database in place is the DLR Archiv: https://dlr-archivkatalog.bsz-bw.de/

Hi Steve! The DLR archive is great. It has tons of citation information. I've even tracked down some English translations from it, which I didn't expect at all.

Speaking of translations, does the GDC collection contain both German documents and English translations? I have some MAP-VG translations where I haven't been able to find the original document, to the point where I kinda wonder whether it even exists. The original might have just ended up in this collection, for all I know.