It depends what you mean by drawings. Production drawings (complete sets) that are required to reproduce a real type may not have survived but scaled down drawings used for various purposes such as AP illustrations and repair schedules often do. Also manufacturers hand outs, Farnboro brochures etc can yield suprising amounts of detail. Often these types of literature can be found in different form in many of the aviation magazines. The errors in plastic kits do not necessarily come from poor research but more often from the pattern makers interpretation. In other words the eye against the drawing.
An even greater problem is the redrawing of existing drawings, which have been published in magazines which contain errors thus perpetuating problems.
I spend a lot of time measuring aircraft in museums and one of the most helpful is Newark Air Museum.
Another problem is incorrect dimensional data in general circulation. Two examples are the Meteor Mk .14 and the DH 103 Hornet, both of which the overall lengths are way out when compared to that published in most publications. The Meteor by 17.5″ and the Hornet by 16 ” The true Meteor dims were proved by fullsize measurement (three examples) and the Hornet by reference to existing manufacturers drawings courtesy of our fellow forumite David Collins and others.
The data is usually out there but it’s a matter of taking the trouble to find it.
John
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