Warbird Information Exchange

Hello All,

In my quest for information on the more obscure Japanese WW2 aircraft, I came across a number of AITG reports for sale on eBay. The seller wants a good amount - understandably - for scans of these rare items. Before I pony up the $ I thought I'd ask the WIX Brain Trust if there is an archive of the AITG reports somewhere that is accessible to the public. I've asked a few aviation author friends and they don't know.

Any suggestions on where to inquire?

Thanks!
Paul Hannah

I'd do a DTIC search first (https://discover.dtic.mil/). I'd imagine that most/all of the eBay stuff derived from there.

Although not specifically about aircraft, as an example: A Short Survey of Japanese Radar, Volume I

Some other possibilities:

• They're not free, but just for reference the Warbirds and Trains store on eBay has a category with a few of them.
• The website WWII Aircraft Performance has a scan of at least one original, so the webmasters might know where to find more of them.
• Similarly, the website Silver Biplanes has a Japanese Aircraft Materials page from mostly Australian sources.
• Websites devoted to republishing public domain government material such as GovernmentAttic.org (e.g. Technical Intelligence Supplement), Public Intelligence or PublicResource.org sometimes have something.
• You can also sometimes find some materials on the NASA Technical Reports Server as it includes NACA wartime reports as well.
• The Library of Congress might be a source. They have a Summary Technical Report of the National Defense Research Committee, for example.
• Japan's counterpart to the LoC, the National Diet Library has some old microfilmed documents in their Digital Collections. For instance, a Ki-21 manual.
• The Navy Department Library has some, mostly non-aviation, reports.
• The National Air and Space Museum has a Captured German & Japanese Air Technical Documents collection.
• The user "Micdrow" over on WW2Aircraft.net frequently contributes manuals to the technical subforum.
• The guy running the blog Aviation Archives posts a lot of stuff, but it is mostly American.
• The subdomain Hyperwar has many digitized or transcribed materials.
• Although apparently requiring a login now, an archived version of the Manuals & Documents page of the Historic Naval Ships Association has some aviation materials.
• HathiTrust, a collection of several university libraries, was heavily used in the creation of the Vintage Aviation Books and Periodicals thread. The post about Technical Air Intelligence Center documents is particularly relevant.
• Lastly, I'll plug the Aviation Archives page on my personal website, Warbird Philosophy.

I recognize that most of the above is not exactly what you're looking for, but it's what I could come up with at short notice. Maybe some of them might have something or give you some ideas on somewhere else to search. Hope this helps!

_________________
Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

Thanks very much gents!

I am enjoying poking around on the various sites, Noha307 and have a search request active with DTIC, Quemeford.

I’ll post about it if I find anything.

Cheers,
PH