I was wondering if anyone had some advice regarding tracking companies that manufactured aircraft parts during WWII…specifically I am trying to find out the companies that supplied parts to Gloster’s for the Typhoons.
I had thought of trying to trace these via invoices however where would they have been sent to? In this instance would they have been sent direct to Glosters? Anyone have any idea if this information may have survived and where it may be now? I have come across instances where records from factories that no longer exist have ended up in local reference libraries…has anyone come across anything? is there a possibility that the invoices would have been sent to Hawkers? in which case would these records now be with BAe? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated….
By: Newforest - 28th October 2007 at 23:35
Vega,
What a crying shame, how can one go to sleep tonight?:eek:
By: Vega ECM - 28th October 2007 at 23:13
Time to recall the sad tale of the Gloster technical archive.
Gloster A/c company last project was a work package for the design of the rear fuse and tail for the HS681 airlifter. In the mid 60’s this project was cancelled and the Gloster design office was closed. The DO manager was its last employee and so he had to pass on the technical archive. He spent some time sorting it into several key groups, e.g. documents which were;- security classified, support to existing flying aircraft, historically important and general. He negotiated with other HS sites for future safe keeping and as such Chadderton agreed to send four lorries to collect the archive. However on the last day before the offices were due to be vacated only a single lorry turned up. Hence there was only transport for the security classified, and support to existing flying aircraft. So regretfully he made a large pile of the rest and burnt it. One or two persons were reported to have carried away bundles of interesting documents before the torching. Indeed every now and again a bit turns up e.g. I found two original GAC bound post war documents in a Glos second hand book shop which may have survived this way.
Even when the data arrived at Chad that was not the end. Chad is well known as a blackhole for paperwork. I visited this in a professional capacity in 1997 and can only describe it as a paper dump. The head archivist told me that in the late 70’s the person in charge of Chad became concerned with the potential for the loss of many classified documents within the archive……so he set about fixing this by destroying this data. Large quantities of Avro720/30, Avro project office, Blue Steel, Hs 681 documentation and possibly even the E28/39 master detail drawing set were lost during this time.
Hence when I have in the past spoken to BAESYSTEM chief archivist she told me “Ah…… we have a bit of a hole when it comes to Glosters”
A better bet is the Jet Age Museum which has scraped together a good selection of Gloster documentation.
By: pagen01 - 28th October 2007 at 11:30
Buy and old copy of a similer era ‘Flight’ magazine.
These mags were full of ads by the aircraft and componants manufacturers
Alot of my research is done that way, the facts arn’t so tarnished by time by using this method.
By: Cees Broere - 28th October 2007 at 11:20
Hi Dave,
how about some pics of your Typhoon bits collection?
Cheers
Cees
By: JetBlast - 27th October 2007 at 21:27
Dave, check your PM’s
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October 27, 2007 at 9:07 pm