Air Technical Index documents

[HypersonicAero]

I'm a researcher in aerodynamics. I'm been spending some time doing a few detailed literature searches on select topics in aerodynamics, including wind tunnel testing of aerodynamic models. My searches have turned up a ton of wind tunnel data generated by the Germans during World War 2. To that end, I'm looking for quite a few original German aeronautics reports.

Many of the documents that I'm looking for are in NASM's captured document collection, but quite a few are not. These documents tend to have ATI numbers that identify them as part of the Air Technical Index collection of documents. This collection appears to consist of both captured German documents and original research done in the US. ATI documents were distributed by the predecessor to the US DoD's Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). They predate the "AD" document series that they use to distribute documents now.

Does anyone know how to find ATI documents in libraries or archives? I haven't been able to find any way to reliably track down a given ATI document once I have its associated ATI number. It's straightforward to find "AD" documents at most university libraries, for example, but all ATI documents appear to be dead ends. I'd appreciate any tips or comments.

[edwest2]

I also research aerodynamics, especially from captured German documents and reports that were written by German authors right after the war. The DTIC still exists.


https://discover.dtic.mil/contact-us/


Captured documents were translated and distributed to US aircraft companies right after the war. As far as I can tell, there has been little published about the activities going on at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio during the war and immediately after. They examined captured German aircraft through their T3 Engineering department. Intelligence was collected by T2 Intelligence. Captured German aircraft were given FE or Foreign Equipment numbers, later changed to T2 numbers, with both being visible in photographs.

[HypersonicAero]

Hi Ed! I appreciate the info. What Wright Field was doing just after the war was always an enigma to me, though I have to admit that I haven't found much if anything describing their activities. All I know is that a lot of their documents are at NASM now.

As far as I know, DTIC does have the ATI documents in microfilm. The issue is that the collection is old and deteriorating. DTIC is reluctant to release them for that reason. That's why I'm interested in trying to find them through other means. I was hoping that other members of this forum would have some experience tracking them down and could share their methods.

I was looking deeper into these forums and ran into an old post by Richard Eger:

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showpo...14&postcount=2

Mr. Eger refers to an index he was compiling that could help locate ATI documents (among other series). This could help me track down the captured documents I'm looking for. However, I've learned that Mr. Eger has sadly passed away. Does anyone know what happened to Mr. Eger's index or if his work was continued by someone else? This kind of index must have taken a lot of work and organization to pull off, because I can only find bits and pieces of information about these document series. Again, I really appreciate everyone's help and expertise here.

[edwest2]

Richard Eger ran a website called the Luftwaffe Archives Group at lwag.org. That site is no longer available. Steve Coates posted the following here: His physical collection went to the Museum of Flight in Seattle as far as I am aware.

[Tony Kambic]

I have a copy of a spreadsheet but no room to upload. Not sure if this is what you seek. description:

ADI (k) Microfilm Index
National Air and Space Museum-Garber Archives

NOTE: This compilation of ADI(k) was made as a quick guide to the type and quantity of material contained on the Navy ADI(k) reels held by NASM archives at Paul Garber facility. The German documents were filmed in Paris during 1945. A quick scan was made to identify the subject matter. Items are not listed by title, most items related to equipment are identified by the German type number. Each item number may contain several documents.
Note that some items are skipped because during the rapid visual scanning, dividers between items were difficult to locate. Also note that the items are not always in sequence. Most of the scanning was done by myself with help from Richard Eger. Thanks to all NASM archive personnel for their help and espcially Larry Wilson.
William A. Medcalf "Artie Bob" 12/20/04

[edwest2]

Looking into this further, I found the following:


Air Technical Information/Index Documents accession numbers start at ATI- 000 001 and go up to 210 999. So whatever you have found should fit somewhere in this range. The series was announced in 1947 and continued till 1953. I recommend checking with the Library of Congress since one source does mention it.

[ouidjat]

I recommand you to look in FRENCH archiv, especially in Ecole Supérieure de L'Aéronautique Archives aka Sup'Aéro ...
They have: Me262 Boundary layer studies ... and much more
Good hunt.

[edwest2]

Yes, the French were testing advanced German aircraft until 1947 at least.

[ArtieBob]

Ouidjat's post leads me to discuss a bit about the role of the Paris clearing house for captured German documents. In
1945, much (but not all) of the material collected by the western allies was sent to a location in Paris. The allied
intelligence gathering effort involved thousands of allied and they gathered a very large quantity of material. In
Paris, this material was apparently indexed and reviewed by many interested allied organizations, including USSBS, RAF,
US Navy, USAAF, the war crimes commission and possilby more. As noted above, all of the documents on the ADI(k) were
microfilmed in Paris, by US Navy intelligence.Included on these films are some of that collection's index sheets which
identify groups of documents and their allied destinations, unfortunately not complete. My question to Ouidjat, does
he know if the "residue" of the Paris documents survived, i.e. captured documents that were not claimed or distributed
to other organizations. Also are there any indications that this material made it into French archives, particularly the
indexes, as they would give a map where to search for document groups that otherwise may have been overlooked.

Best Regards

Artie Bob

[HypersonicAero]

I appreciate all of the replies. These are providing me a lot of good sources to check, though for the moment I'm trying to avoid foreign sources until I'm sure I've exhausted all domestic ones.

Thanks for the interesting info about the Paris clearinghouse for the captured documents, Artie Bob! I wasn't aware of the logistics of it. I'm starting to think now that perhaps the documents I'm looking for could be England or France (or for that matter Germany) depending on how they could have been divvied up.

On a similar note, I should add that I've seen a lot of references to a large collection of captured documents in the UK. For example, consider this bibliography of the works by Dietrich Küchemann, famous German aerodynamics expert:

https://apps.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA044591

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.