Are British Aerospace still destroying historical artifacts ?

Drawings are routinely destroyed after being copied onto a micro film media (or digital scanning). I think your informant is giving you a political spin on routine procedures.

It seems like it. But maybe some extra transparency would go a long way to stop these theories from the start.
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Marius from outsourcing from Romania

Hi Vega

I hope your right, as what was said to me, was that all such drawings that were still with BAe, had been, or were in the process of being shredded & burned.

Bob T.

Drawings are routinely destroyed after being copied onto a micro film media (or digital scanning). I think your informant is giving you a political spin on routine procedures.

No taxpayers’ money there, BAE has been a private company for a long time now.

Sopwith, I think you are being a bit hard on B.Ae.Systems, saying they care nothing for their heritage. £5 million towards Airspace at Duxford would counter that assertion.

Surely that would be tax payers money?

NAM is also suffering due to lack of GAL drawings for the Monospar rebuild – on a more positive note, when I was at Newark on Thursday the restored horizontal and vertical tail surfaces were back on VH-UTH! 🙂

I was told by some one that General Aircraft Ltd drawings, were burned.

🙁 That’s me screwed then.

Although I concur. I heard the same thing too and hoped it was untrue. A friend of mine had a few documents he got from someone who saved them from a GAL office that was being cleared.

So if I had the time and ability and wanted to build a cockpit section of an Airspeed Envoy or Miles Monitor for example, would these drawings exist and be available as long as the right litigation clauses were signed etc? I.e. do these drawings still exist in the BAe archive or elswhere? Would be a shame to think that some of the products of the great pioneers could never be recreated!

Thankfully, a large number of drawings from such manufacturers as Sopwith, Supermarine, & Bristol, etc were given to various museums, some time ago. & Drawings for certain DH types are in the safe hands of DeHavilland support. However I have no knowledge of any Blackburn, English Electric, or Hawker drawings having been passed on to a museum.
AFIK-
There is very little surviving in the way of drawings for Miles aircraft.
Avro’s lost most of their drawings for pre WW2 types, in a fire, though thankfully there are sets of drawings surviving for the 504K & Avian.
Most of Gloster’s drawings were thrown into a skip some time after WW2.
Very little in the way of Armstrong Whitworth drawings survive.
Most of the early DeHavilland “Airco” drawings were thrown out during WW2, though I have heard a rumour that a lot were saved by staff, who took them home, rather than see them destroyed.
I was told by some one that General Aircraft Ltd drawings, were burned.

Bob T.

The wonders of ‘Prior Art’ – at the last company I worked for I spent at least two weeks, searching the company’s photographic archive to find dated / annotated photographs of a particular design of weighing equipment from the 1950s; these were required for use in a patent case similar to that described by Vega ECM in #17.

These photographs were eventually found and along with drawings (and even a site visit to see a working scale); they were eventually used to successfully defend a patent dispute with a European competitor!

Hi Vega

I hope your right, as what was said to me, was that all such drawings that were still with BAe, had been, or were in the process of being shredded & burned.

Bob T.

Please let me fill in some the gaps here.

BAESYSTEMS motive for maintaining it’s archive is to support its current intellectual property protection and nothing really to do with heritage preservation. You wouldn’t believe how many times a company such as this receives a challenge that a new/current design is infringing somebodies else’s patent to a point they have to defend themselves.

They were badly stung in the mid nineties when a patent infringement claim went wrong. This was at least in part because their archive was in such a mess they couldn’t prove that one of their original founding companies, now absorbed into current company had invented the same thing long ago. This case clearly showed the value of being able to search and access archive information know as prior art. So a project was launched to centralise the archive at Farnborough and catalogue it. When the project was running they found;-
– some sites had reasonable records in reasonable shape
– some sites had passed their archive on to museums
– a few sites had destroyed most of it
– a few sites had piles of paper gradually being eaten by rats.

The project has taken a long time, is still ongoing, and you would be surprised at what’s been found/held.

However the data held is strictly for the companies own use and they see no commercial incentive to publishing it with a third party.

The current business trend is for outsourcing, so I understand that it is/ will be stored by a specialise data storage contractor which is where, I suspect, the story in the initial post has its origins.

It was some one at Farnborough, who I spoke to.

That is sad news if it transpires to be correct.
RAFM hold some types drawings, but I assume that they’re all too general?

So if I had the time and ability and wanted to build a cockpit section of an Airspeed Envoy or Miles Monitor for example, would these drawings exist and be available as long as the right litigation clauses were signed etc? I.e. do these drawings still exist in the BAe archive or elswhere? Would be a shame to think that some of the products of the great pioneers could never be recreated!

Sopwith7f1

Yes, the drawings are secure. Haven’t heard a ‘peep’ from the Peoples Mossie – lately.

During 2004/5, while trying to attract interest in forming a group of like minded people to assess the feasibility of building a new Mosquito, I approached BAe and asked for copies of drawings.

The reply was that they – for reasons to do with product liability – would not make any drawings available to the public and suggested that I talk to DH Support, which I did, only to receive the same reply.

I had many exchanges with Glyn Powell who advised me most strongly not to attempt the project. The reasons he gave were compelling. I did however track down a source for Mosquito drawings – a very nearly complete set were available to me but, I did not take up the offer.

Hi John

I take it these drawings are in safe hands ?.

Has there been anymore movement, with the Peoples Mosquito project, or has it been shelved ?.

Bob T.

[QUOTE=pagen01;2007065]As far as I’m aware BAE pass on all their uneeded historical drawings, photos & data etc to their own publicly accessible archive (there is some care about their heritage) collection at Farnborough.
I would certainly contact them before lending too much credence to the destruction story mentioned.

Hi Pagen01

It was some one at Farnborough, who I spoke to.

Bob T.

As far as I’m aware BAE pass on all their uneeded historical drawings, photos & data etc to their own publicly accessible archive (there is some care about their heritage) collection at Farnborough.
I would certainly contact them before lending too much credence to the destruction story mentioned.

Other pre BAE company collections are worth trying as mentioned above, ie Brooklands for Vickers stuff.

During 2004/5, while trying to attract interest in forming a group of like minded people to assess the feasibility of building a new Mosquito, I approached BAe and asked for copies of drawings.

The reply was that they – for reasons to do with product liability – would not make any drawings available to the public and suggested that I talk to DH Support, which I did, only to receive the same reply.

I had many exchanges with Glyn Powell who advised me most strongly not to attempt the project. The reasons he gave were compelling. I did however track down a source for Mosquito drawings – a very nearly complete set were available to me but, I did not take up the offer.

ozplane-
I am not being harsh to BAe as such, If you read my comment about them not caring about their heritage, you will see that it is only relevant IF what I was told by some one who is involved with BAe archives, is true.

I was making a general enquirey about drawings in the BAe archive’s, I was not asking for copies, nor did I ask if copies could be acquired.

If the person I spoke to had said that they had drawings for which ever types, but that access to them was not allowed, then that would be understandable, given what has happened in the past. However, what he told me, is that the drawings had been, or were in the process of being destroyed “shredded & burned were the words he used”.

Bob T.

Sopwith, I think you are being a bit hard on B.Ae.Systems, saying they care nothing for their heritage. £5 million towards Airspace at Duxford would counter that assertion.

I remember years ago hearing about an American project to build a Horsa glider with the intention of flying it that quickly went quiet.

I know the guys at Shawbury only got access to the drawings on condition that they would never try to fly their glider.

This thread has got me rather concerned that the plans for the aircraft I’m after are gone and if they do exist they’d never allow me access to them even for a 1:6 scale cut-away display model.