Warbird Information Exchange

Hi

I'm fascinating by US aircraft manufacturers photos of the 50's. I know that there are plenty of treasures that were never published, mostly in colour.

I would like to know more about the photo "politics" (or usages ? I'm French and my English is poor..) used by US manufacturers of military aircraft in the 50's, the usage of B&W or colour, and the photo designation systems...

For instance, I noticed some of the codes used by Boeing or McDonnell, but who can tell us more about that ?

Boeing :
P series (Publicity ??)
BW series (Black and White, but P photos seem to be black and white too ??)
K series (Kodachrome ? colour ?)
others....

McDonnell Aircraft :
D4E series (black and white only ? What means D, 4, and E )
D4C series (seems to be colour...?)

What was the proportion of colour/BW photos among the years ?

And what about other manufacturers : Convair, Northrop, Lockheed, Vought, Grumman, North American etc etc

Thank you very much for your replies

And what about famous aircraft photographers : Roy Wolford (Northrop)....Otto Menge etc

While I can't help you with the file naming systems used by the different manufacturers, I can point you to some fascinating photos you would be interested in if you haven't already seen them. You should visit the following thread on this forum...

http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13327

There are several thousand manufacturer photos from Grumman here, going from the very early days until the 1980's. The guy you should talk to goes by the name armyjunk2 here. He posted those images, and may know a bit more about how Grumman gave them file numbers etc.

All the best,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

Try contacting Boeing Historical Services @ P.O. Box 3707 Renton, WA. 98055 as they are in possession of all historical things pertaining to Boeing, Douglas, McDonnell, and Rockwell. Boeing is very diligent about keeping the histories of companies it has taken over alive and vibrant, unlike some corporations who immediately threw out almost every scrap of historical information of the companies they bought out.

Welcome to the WIX, and your English is much better than my microscopic French

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I am here wondering for largest and most profitable aircraft manufacturing companies. Please provide me the list of prominent aircraft manufacturing firms, it should be in alphabetical orders.

airplane manufacturers

As of today in the U.S. it's the big three;

Boeing
Locoweed/Martini
Northrop/Grumman
as those companies have bought out, run off, or absorbed everyone else.


in gen av it's
CESSNA
CIRRUS
RAYTHEON

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-