Warbird Information Exchange

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this site are the responsibility of the poster and do not reflect the views of the management.
It is currently Tue Mar 19, 2024 1:28 am

All times are UTC - 5 hours


Classic Wings Magazine WWII Naval Aviation Research Pacific Luftwaffe Resource Center
When Hollywood Ruled The Skies - Volumes 1 through 4 by Bruce Oriss


Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 7 posts ] 
Author Message
 Post subject: Aircraft 3-Views Project
PostPosted: Sun Oct 09, 2022 9:43 pm 
Offline
1000+ Posts!
1000+ Posts!
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2012 4:48 pm
Posts: 1615
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
As a sequel to the aerospace manufacturer logo project, I have foolishly taken on another similar effort: aircraft 3-view diagrams.

Many aircraft articles on Wikipedia, feature a 3-view drawing of the subject aircraft on the right side in the specifications section. However, far, far more are missing them. To this end, there is a page on Wikimedia Commons where wanted 3-views can be requested. After adding a few requests there (as I lack the artistic skill necessary to create them myself), I realized that the page has unfortunately been dormant for some time. However, as mentioned in a post in a different thread, a few months later I came across a document titled "Japanese Aircraft Manual" on HathiTrust. Far from instructing the reader on how to operate Japanese aircraft, it is instead a recognition manual with 3-view drawings of the subjects. Three factors made it excellent for this purpose: 1) the drawings were sufficiently large, 2) unlike most recognition materials from the period, the diagrams were line drawings, not silhouettes, and 3) it was a military manual, making it public domain. From there, the scope of the project somewhat metastasized and there are now 100 American aircraft line drawings, 23 Japanese aircraft line drawings, 1 other aircraft line drawing, 6 American aircraft silhouette drawings, and 8 Japanese aircraft line drawings in a section on my Wikimedia Commons userpage.

So far, in addition to the above, I have sourced 3-views from:
  • a booklet titled Operational Japanese Aircraft provided via email by the Emil Buehler Naval Aviation Library at the National Naval Aviation Museum (special thanks to Bob Thomas),
  • two pages (1, 2) with Standard Aircraft Characteristics/Characteristics Summaries on a website called Alternate Wars,
  • a section on the National History and Heritage Command website,
  • a USAAF silhouette handbook on HathiTrust,
  • AirCorps Library (special thanks to Ester Aube),
  • and a few other sources.

However, there are still more I am seeking. I have reached out to one or two aircraft manual sellers so far, but the examples they have still do not cover all of the bases. Therefore, the first of the two purposes of this post is to ask if anyone has access to 3-view drawings of any of the aircraft in the "To Find" section of my userpage. (A further significant motivation for this project was to aid in the distinction between similar looking aircraft by creating side-by-side or overlapping comparison images, so the section has been divided into categories such as "American Liaison Airplanes" or "World War II Japanese Twin Engine Airplanes".) Remember that all of the conditions in the previous thread apply to this project as well. The main one is that they must be public domain or have an equivalent license. (Effectively, this means that if the drawing does not come from a U.S. military or government document, it must be defective, i.e. lack at least one of the following: the word "copyright" or the copyright symbol, the date of publication, and/or the name of the copyright owner.) However, it is also important that they are large enough to be of use and not poor quality. (This usually means a scan of an original document, not a picture taken with a camera and not a reproduction of a photocopy.) One helpful tip I will add: I have discovered when it comes to US Army Air Force aircraft that the 3-views are almost always found not in the pilot's flight operating instructions, but instead the erection and maintenance manual.

The other purpose is to inform everyone that these drawings exist and are free to use. For a complete collection, including examples others have uploaded, check out the aircraft 3-views category. In addition, although not necessarily limited to them, the line drawings of aircraft and silhouette drawings of aircraft categories have many 3-views. So, as before...

Please enjoy!

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Thu Apr 06, 2023 10:56 pm 
Offline
1000+ Posts!
1000+ Posts!
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2012 4:48 pm
Posts: 1615
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
I am pleased to announce that, as of tonight, a total of 200 aircraft 3-view drawings have now been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons! (For reference, 14 of them are silhouettes and the remaining 186 are line drawings.)

A big thanks goes out to Patrick Hibbard, the man behind the eBay store Warbirds and Trains. Without him, 3-views for many of the rarer aircraft would have very likely have been nearly impossible to find. For those interested in learning a bit more, Mr. Hibbard's collection was profiled in a post in the digital aircraft manual sources thread. A total of 19 of 3-views came from him.

The other major source, as it turned out, was right under my nose at the Tri-State Warbird Museum. A collection that belonged to a man named Charles C. McCullough, donated before I started working there, was the key. In his time working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Mr. McCullough collected pages from aircraft manuals. He only saved certain pages, but fortuitously the ones he chose were those with drawings on them. There are a number of tracings of aircraft in the collection and some of the pages have pencil marks on them, so I can only presume he acquired them as reference material. Whether it was for his job or just a hobby, I do not know. Either way, I was able to scan, clean up, and upload no less than 38 of the 3-views from this collection.

I expect the pace of uploading to slow down a bit from now on due to most of the common aircraft I was seeking 3-view drawings for being exhausted. However, there are still a few that I am looking for.

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2023 8:02 am 
Online
3000+ Post Club
3000+ Post Club
User avatar

Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2004 2:29 pm
Posts: 4469
Location: Dallas, TX
This is great! I for one have used some of these line view drawings as a basis for a series of little Lego planes for kids.

_________________
Aerial Photographer with Red Wing Aerial Photography currently based at KRBD and tailwheel CFI.
Websites: Texas Tailwheel Flight Training, DoolittleRaid.com and Lbirds.com.

The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD. - Prov. 21:31 - Train, Practice, Trust.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:10 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Tue Jun 08, 2010 11:40 pm
Posts: 269
Location: On the road
A great source for 3 views of Japanese WWII aircraft are the Maru Mechanic magazine series. I was recently in Chicago with the tour and stopped in at the Pritzger Military Museum and Library and accessed their collection of all 50 issues of MM. The library also does interlibrary loans - check out their resources on their website. A number of their books were donated by a respected model maker and he had a LOT of great reference material.

https://www.pritzkermilitary.org

Cheers,
VB


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:17 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: Tue Jun 08, 2010 11:40 pm
Posts: 269
Location: On the road
They also had a great resource on the Japanese military called Asahi Journal - put out by enthusiasts in the 1990's - and something I'd never heard of. Very cool.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sat Jul 08, 2023 7:15 pm 
Offline
1000+ Posts!
1000+ Posts!
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2012 4:48 pm
Posts: 1615
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
After much effort, the total number of uploaded aircraft 3-view drawings now stands at 288: 267 line drawings and 21 silhouettes. The majority of these, 54, came from the McCullough Collection at the museum. (With maybe a few exceptions - such as additional drawings of variants with very little difference from those that have already been uploaded and a small number yet to go - I have pretty much exhausted all of the available drawings in said collection.) However, there were other sources as well. These include: 18 from Flight Manuals Online and 2 each from Patrick Hibbard, the Emil Buehler Naval Aviation Library at the National Naval Aviation Museum and the Museum of Flight. Another 6 and 2 came from from museum volunteer Larry Workman's and museum mechanic Greg Muir's personal collections, respectively. Last, but not least, 1 came from WIX's very own Kevin "tulsaboy" Gray. (The difference between the total and the uploads is off by one as there is a 3-view that I am not including as it already existed on Wikimedia Commons, I just uploaded a cleaned up version.) Thanks to all who have contributed so far!

After spending a lot of time staring at and looking for 3-views, I started to notice a few trends:
  • Most, if not all, of the military drawings were provided by the manufacturer and not created by the military itself. One piece of evidence is that many of the drawings still have the original company drawing number in the lower left or right corner. (Note: Many of these have been cropped out in the versions I uploaded.) However, a more interesting clue - and what initially made me notice the trend - is that certain companies had different conventions for their drawings. For example, Douglas, quite uniquely, filled in their 3-views, but did so with multi-shaded depictions of the aircraft rather than using a single color. In another case, North American's drawings are far more detailed than anyone else's. They include details like multiple centers of gravity and many more measurements for dimensions outside of the most basic length, width and height. (The B-25 3-views were so complicated, cleaning them up almost drove me crazy.)
  • Similarly, when decided which of the multiple copies that Mr. McCullough had kept to use, it became evident how certain drawings had been copied and recopied over time, as the quality had degraded by the later versions.
  • I have come across only two 3-view drawings that included color: one for the T-6 and one for the B-17.
  • The Mooney M20C 3-view is unique in that the artist chose to depict the ground in the overhead view. There are many other examples that include a ground line in the head on or profile view for reference, but only the M20C has the shaded ground underneath the airplane. It is so unusual, it took me a while to even understand what exactly I was looking at. What is so interesting about it is that it essentially serves no purpose.
  • In a number of cases, the views were so large that they were split over two different pages. The B-36 in particular had an odd line that criss-crossed both pages and separated the text and drawings.

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2023 9:35 pm 
Offline
1000+ Posts!
1000+ Posts!
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2012 4:48 pm
Posts: 1615
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
While not quite as many as last time, 35 more aircraft 3-view line drawings have been uploaded. This brings the total to 323: 302 line drawings and 21 silhouettes. They come from three sources:
  • Since my last post, I learned that it just so happens that Sporty's Pilot Shop, which is immediately across the runway from our museum, happens to have a room called the "Vorbeck Research Library". Furthermore, it had a number of pre-1978 aircraft manuals. (A good portion of which, it turned out, were originally owned by Charles D. "Don" Fairbanks, a World War II B-24 tail gunner and postwar civilian flight instructor featured in a display case at the museum.) I contacted Mike Wolf, the president and CEO, and he was kind enough to let me briefly borrow them (from what is otherwise a non-lending library) so that I could scan the relevant pages. As a result, there are now 21 additional Beechcraft, Cessna and Piper 3-view line drawings on Wikimedia Commons. (In addition, 1 Piper Colt logo from the same source was also scanned and uploaded.) A big thank you Mike for being so generous!
  • The McCullough Collection provided an additional 13 military 3-view drawings as well. Although there are a few left that may or may not be cleaned up and uploaded in the future, this pretty much exhausts most of the unique 3-view drawings that were in the collection. So, most new uploads will likely come from elsewhere. However, when I went back to look through the collection a second time to check what I had either missed or skipped, decided to scan 3 other drawings: 2 cross section profile views and an overhead interior layout/seating arrangement.
  • The Gordon Yuellig Collection at the museum had a brochure that 1 drawing was scanned from.

As a final note, the aircraft 3-view categories on Wikimedia Commons have been reorganized thanks to the help of another individual. They are now sorted by both number of views and number of axes depicted.

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 7 posts ] 

All times are UTC - 5 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: A68-1001, Hooligan2 and 13 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group