As always part numbers and inspection stamps are the best information as there are parts lists available for many aircraft
I can only agree, a nameplate is hard to top. Especially if the aircraft type and manufacturer are indicated as on the usual German ones. On the other hand, you can see from our other question about an unknown wing - with a manufacturer's plate - that that's not always enough either.
As a studied archaeologist, however, I am familiar with the situation that no written sources are available. And yet we learn to draw meaningful conclusions from other details.
Recently we received a well preserved aircraft part without any further information. Here, too, the nameplate was completely destroyed. With the help of a large museum it could nevertheless be identified very quickly and clearly as a wing part of a JU 88. Helpful was the experience the staff there had with this model. Overall shape, arrangement of the rivet rows, shape of the stiffeners and other details were completely adequate.
In another case, it took a year and intensive research to arrive at a clear result. From an underground aircraft factory near Munich, we received about 100 already banana-shaped cut sheets with the imprint " AWS 3116.5" (a typical aluminum material specification, in this case from the manufacturer Aluminium-Walzwerke Singen). According to the literature, only parts for the ME 109 and ME 262 were produced there. Only when we were able to stop a paper template of our sheet metal on the original fuselage of an ME 262 was the mystery clearly solved: Our sheet metal was intended for the construction of the ME 262 fuselage. In retrospect, one always wonders why it took so long.
A delivery of unknown aircraft sheet metal from a former Messerschmitt factory (2014)
The moment when the template fit. Our plates were intended for the ME 262.