Aircraft part found in France

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A

artdeco

Recruit
7
7
Jun 9, 2025
Good morning. I am an antique dealer in France and I recently had the opportunity to acquire an aluminum piece at a flea market that I believe came from a World War II plane. The piece was found in the "Occitanie" region of southern France in a triangle of towns which could be "Beziers - Ales - Nimes". I read that unfortunately during the Second World War Michell B 25s were shot down. Could this part belong to this model of plane? In advance I thank you for your sagacity. Jean-Noel

 
Not from a B-25. I don't recognize that vent from anywhere on the Mitchell. That riveting style doesn't seem standard American practice. Never seen a round manufactured head on the inside and the shop head made flush on the outside.
 
Looks like a detail from a British fresh air intake based on what I've seen on the Mosquito. Obviously not a Mossie though.

Look for stamped part numbers on the disc.
 
I have to say that doesn't look British or American IMHO. The rivets are strange-looking and the captive fasteners too. French or German possibly?
 
A Very interesting part. I think your best chance of identifying it is to find some part numbers as Crimea_River suggests above.

The anchor nuts on the vented panel look standard US/Brit and are probably similar in other counties as well.


The "screw" heads are a type that Lockheed used a lot of post war but I have never seen that head on wartime Lockheed (or any other) aircraft. That does not mean they did not do so though. Lockheed devised their screw head, and licenced it to Fokker, to avoid paying a small fee per screw to the Phillips head patent holders.



The big "receptacles" may well be quick release of some sort as they are far fatter than any anchor nuts I have seen and weight is always an issue on aircraft to that large diameter wall would not be normal.
.

As for the rivets. I never saw any wartime US aircraft with the manufactured head on the inside of the aircraft but the Brits definitely did that on some aircraft and I have a vague memory of the Germans doing that as well.

The other option is if someone like Wurger recognises the shape of the panel as specific to a particular aircraft type.

EDIT - Most US aircraft used Philips or Reed and Prince headed screws (or both in the case of Curtiss). Most Brit aircraft used regular slot head screws.
 
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I'm not sure that those rivet 'heads' on the inner surfaces are in fact heads. They look like formed tails with standard countersunk heads on the outside. It's rare in my experience to react rivets from the outer surface and so I'd say that aspect alone makes this panel somewhat unusual. It certainly doesn't look American or British.

Ditto the captive fasteners; they look to be quick-release but the standard should be Oddie/Dzus for British and often Camloc for US. These don't seem to be either type and I can't recall seeing them before on UK or US aircraft.

But yes - a good clean of the panel and some stamped part numbers on the panels (not the hardware) would help identify the type.
 
thank you very much to all of you for your extremely technical answers. I didn't think the type of bolt would give any clues. Therefore I am posting more detailed photos below in case it might help you. Finally, I didn't find any marks in the metal. Thank you again for your expertise.
 
Sabrejet said:
I'm not sure that those rivet 'heads' on the inner surfaces are in fact heads. They look like formed tails with standard countersunk heads on the outside.
Click to expand...

When I look at most of them with a single dimple, that makes me think they're AD rivets. I'm not aware of a bucking bar that would make such uniform, domed manufactured heads. Doesn't mean there isn't one, I'm just not familiar.
 
Out of curiosity: how does this vent work?


The inner part is obviously fixed/riveted to the skin. There are 6 circular and one elliptical openings in it. The outer part is attached to the inner one with 6 screws and is detachable. Are those some kind of "fast" connectors or not doesn't change anything. There are 7 circular openings (no elliptical though!). Why the difference? What happens if we "open" the outer part? Nothing for me, because the inner part is fixed. Maybe it's openable only to remove the mesh? Could this be a part from a more modern airplane? Or from some bigger part (external tank)?
 

Yes, the outer portion is removable to replace the mesh screen.

No, the small screws (and I believe the larger ones as well) are not quarter turn fasteners. They are fiberlock nutplates, you can see the remnants of the red fiberlock material. It looks like you might be able to see some of that same material in the larger nutplates as well.

These panels are designed to be removed if necessary, but not at every maintenance cycle. Nylocs (common current name) do wear out, so you just want to remove screws only when needed, especially from riveted nutplates. They also wouldn't be near an engine, as heat deteriorates the material.

I'm going to postulate that this is a lower wing section. Those are fairly beefy stiffeners that could be running perpendicular to the fuselage for structure. The larger nutplates allowed for removal of a panel that may have been under a fuel, oil or coolant system for access. The rows of missing rivets on either side of the vent makes me think there was a ram air scoop located there.
 
Thank you for your detailed explanation! I think it's very informative for all of us, reading this thread.
I saw that red remnants and my first thought was "plastic". Are those nylocs modern? Post WWII?
 
CATCH 22 said:
Thank you for your detailed explanation! I think it's very informative for all of us, reading this thread.
I saw that red remnants and my first thought was "plastic". Are those nylocs modern? Post WWII?
Click to expand...

Fiberlocks were invented in the late 1920's or early 1930's.

Slotted screws pretty much were stopped being used during the mid-1940's. There was a time you'd actually have a mix of them on an airplane as inventory was switched over. I hadn't heard the Lockheed story mentioned earlier in this thread.

The rivet style still has be baffled though.
 
Curtiss stopped using slot screws about 1939 and went to a mix of Phillips and Reed and Prince (Frearson) - sometimes on the same part like windscreens and canopies - but the Brits were still using them on Bristol Freighters in the 50's.

I have no idea when other nations operating in the area (France, Germany, Holland?) changed from slot to other designs.

The Lockheed screw heads (Hi-Torque - I could not remember the name until now) were better than the regular slot head as there was no chance of the tooling gouging out the surrounding metal. HOWEVER the Lockheed slot was curved like a Dzus slot and the edges were not parallel unlike those on this panel. The centre photo below sort of shows the wider ends and narrower centre. These were used all over the Lockheed L-188 and Fokker F-28. I cannot remember them on the C-130 or Orion but my work on them was minimal and on powerplants only. I still have some of these rotten bits in my tool kit. If I throw them out as sure as the gods made little green apples I WILL need them.


That slight curve therefore suggests to me that MAYBE the screws on A artdeco 's panel used standard "slot" screwdrivers but had built in protection against gouging the countersink. Is anyone on the forum familiar with such screws?

Note also that although unusual some manufacturers did buck the countersunk head and I have only seen that on Brit aircraft. The Brits also had a habit pre ww2 of bucking tails into a hemisphere but I have never seen that done with a dimple in the tail like A artdeco 's rivets have.
 
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A artdeco

Could you please look closely at those countersunk head screws and see if they have a flat or curved bottom. That would probably confirm or reject Lockheed and post war Fokker products. I do remember hearing about coin slot screws many years ago but I do not know anything about them. They may be another, now rare, drive type or they may be just another name for hi-torque screws (which was my assumption when I heard of them).

I do doubt these are hi-torque screws tho as the sides look too straight/parallel to me.

 
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Thanks for trying. The tip of the screw is curved.
 
smutny said:
When I look at most of them with a single dimple, that makes me think they're AD rivets. I'm not aware of a bucking bar that would make such uniform, domed manufactured heads. Doesn't mean there isn't one, I'm just not familiar.
Click to expand...
Same here, yet the countersunk side looks too uniform to be a reacted tail. Plus I've never riveted 'inside to outside' with the tail outermost.

I'm also thinking that if the vent panel can be removed there might well be a part number stamped or stencilled on either the inner face of the panel or the riveted retaining plate.

I'm still thinking it's not British or US-built.
 
I will try and find one of my old British bucking bars tomorrow and photograph it. They are totally different to US bucking bars as they have both a hole and a hemisphere in them - the hole for drawing the metal together before forming the tail and the hemisphere to create the tail.

Very British and proof of the British #1 design law - Why make it easy when with a little bit of thought you can make it freaking near impossible.
 
Speaking of "Coin slot" screws, they were still used on Shorts Brothers Aircraft at least into the late 1980's. The Shorts 360's had them in many places. The most aggravating place they had them were countersunk screw that held down the composite floor boards in the passenger compartment. They would fill up with debris and all the spilled drinks could almost weld them into place.
I am told that they have a higher shear stregnth compared to Phillips head counter sunk screws. I know they were a pain to remove during "C" checks, and usually were replaced with Phillips head screws after they were removed the 1st time. The 360's also had them in other places, but those are the ones I remember being fustrated by.

I agree with the part being from the lower wing skin of the aircraft, probably the forward of the wing spar, lower surface. For some reason I keep thinking of a Naval Aircraft, flying boat or seaplane. But I have no actual prrof of that. The panel with the holes just looks like a drain to my eyes.
 
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