The original technical documentation of an aircraft usually becomes a bunch of useless, unreadable paper rolls that disappear in trash bins. After a few decades most of these companies are sold, while the less successful ones are out of the business. When the production of an aircraft is definitely closed, and it quits the service, its blueprints are packed into manufacturer’s archives. Figure 97-1 This copy of the P-47 drawing was made using the old blueprint method And even those, who saw these drawings, often did not know what they are seeing). (Everybody wished to have this ultimate resource, but only few saw it. During the long hours of studying the photos and trying to figure out the precise shape of this plane I often wished to have its source blueprints! For many years the access to the original documentation was “the Holy Grail” of the advanced modelers. You can see this in my work on the SBD Dauntless. Recreating geometry of a historical aircraft is usually a painstaking, iterative process.
