Mosquito aircraft blueprints found at Broughton.

[Ddraig Goch]

I've checked if this item has been posted and can't find it excuse me if it's out there.The blueprints were found when a office was being cleared out.
Follow the link to the news item:
WW2 Mosquito aircraft blueprints found at Airbus factory - BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-40873628)

Hopefully they will be of use to the People's Mosquito Project to enable them to build their Mosquito.

[OldLurker]

They've had all that stuff sitting there for 70 years and never noticed? The mind boggles.
Still, at least we can be grateful they didn't just get a JCB and put it all in the skip.

[DaveReidUK]

They've had all that stuff sitting there for 70 years and never noticed? The mind boggles.

Ah, but according to that BBC report "the drawings were made on micro film aperture cards". :O

[widgeon]

Talking of old prints , I worked a contract at Shorts many years ago and some of the guys were working on part for the Canberra which I guess was still used for photo recon in the mid 80s.
The drawings looked like they were on some sort of animal skin ( I guess it was old Velum ) , I wonder what media the original Mosquito drawings were on ?.

[scifi]

My guess is that a lot of the plans were on plain paper.


I was in the local push bike club, holding a Hill-Climb on the Horseshoe Pass. One of our members who worked at Broughton, said he could enlarge the Start-Sheet. I said it was to go on the wall of the event centre, so that everyone could see it....


When he brought it back from Broughton, it was the size of the wall... All on one sheet of paper, with each name about 2cm high.
.

[India Four Two]

I would be really interested to know when those aperture cards were made.

Are they contemporaneous with the original drawings or were they made subsequently as part of an archiving project?

I find it odd that the article implies “now we can build a Mosquito”. The boys at Avspecs in Auckland have managed quite well!

Not a good photo, but special for me. These are my knees, in KA114 at Ardmore!

[esa-aardvark]

There is no scale, but those things look just like aperture cards
which were still around in 1974, when I met them.

[joy ride]

Fascinating, what a find! Particularly interesting for me as my grandad was a celebrated yacht designer and pioneer of marine play forming techniques for yacht hulls. His reputation was such that during WW2 he was told to lend his skills to de Havilland, in UK, Canada and briefly in USA. He also designed high speed patrol and rescue boats. The National Maritime Museum hold a large number of his yacht drawings, but there is virtually nothing to show for his work on Mosquito, Hornet and Vampire (fuselage). It is just possible that some of his work might be in this collection, time will tell...

[IcePaq]

Wood laminates now with modern epoxy glues are coming back in a big way.

Someone out there is getting the benefit of your grand dad's work still to this day.

[Ancient-Mariner]

Some more information here:- Thousands of drawings discovered in Broughton hanger will help WW2 Mosquito bomber fly again. (http://www.deeside.com/thousands-drawings-discovered-broughton-hanger-will-help-ww2-mosquito-bomber-fly/)

[Allan Lupton]

As noted in the BBC report, the Mosquito owned by DH/HSA/BAe was based at Broughton for many years and a set of drawings would have been made available as part of equipping the site for maintaining the aeroplane. Aperture cards were in use at the time they set that up, so no surprise to find the drawings in that form, but they would have been made specifically for keeping that aeroplane flying.

[DaveReidUK]

While one can only wish the People's Mosquito team well, the project seems hugely ambitious and quoted £7m budget completely unrealistic.

Essentially, it seems, they are planning to build a Mosquito virtually from scratch around the ID plate of a destroyed aircraft (RL249) whuch crashed and burned at Coltishall in 1949, the remains subsequently being used for fire practice before finally the few surviving metal components were buried in a field for 40-odd years until 2006. Hence the need for a set of drawings from which to work (though they only turned up last October, which makes one wonder what they had planned to use prior to that).

I'd be surprised if a single surviving component is able to be used in the "restoration" - here's the main spar, for example:

http://www.warbirdsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/RL249-main-spar-600x450.jpg

http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbird-restorations/peoples-mosquito-project.html

[Wander00]

Joyride - who was your Granddad - just I have an interest in old boats and old aircraft - not Uffa Fox was he.....

[ICT_SLB]

As an apprentice at BAC Hurn around 1970, we had a new Inspector arrive from Hatfield. Far from boasting, he said one of his last jobs had been to destroy about a ton of old DeH documents. The only other possible source would be Downsview (Toronto, Canada) where deHavilland Canada also built the Mosquito.

[Allan Lupton]

As an apprentice at BAC Hurn around 1970, we had a new Inspector arrive from Hatfield. Far from boasting, he said one of his last jobs had been to destroy about a ton of old DeH documents.
What is never clear from reports like this is whether any originals were destroyed, but I'd think not.
My guess is that an Inspector would have been surrounded by working prints which were redundant once the aeroplane concerned was out of production, so nothing would be lost by binning them.

[Ancient-Mariner]

Up date from today's news:-
Airbus to give financial backing for Broughton built 'People?s Mosquito' (http://www.deeside.com/airbus-to-give-financial-backing-for-broughton-built-peoples-mosquito/)
Clive