New Me 309 Book by Calum Douglas and Dan Sharp

[MiTasol]

What annoys the hell out of me most are things like

• RAAF records that contain errors that are then carried on to self proclaimed authoritative sites. Example - RAAF Spitfire A58-104. RAAF records show that aircraft carried the RAF serial number EE564. The correct RAF serial was EF564. The RAF serial EE564 was not allocated to any Spitfire aircraft. I wonder how many books/websites contain references to Spitfire EE564 as a result of that error. Note I forgive the RAAF for that one because at the time those Spitfires arrived the RAAF was getting more aircraft in a week than they had received in most years prior to that and the poor blighter that typed up the history card would have been working from handwritten notes, plus all the other aircraft immediately following it were in the EE serial group.
• Archives file x is dated 193n and the archive dates it 1800 or the file title page clearly says x and they type in something totally different. I search multiple archives and the National Australian Archive are the only ones who do this to probably 5% of all files that I search for which makes searching !@#$%^& difficult. British and US archive site records contain a miniscule error rate.
• Web pages that contain a wealth of information but fail to proof read their content so that aircraft serial x is operated by xAF and yAF at the same time on the same page just a few lines apart, or is in location x and location y at the same time just a few lines apart, etc etc.

 

[Dan Sharp]

What annoys the hell out of me most are things like

• RAAF records that contain errors that are then carried on to self proclaimed authoritative sites. Example - RAAF Spitfire A58-104. RAAF records show that aircraft carried the RAF serial number EE564. The correct RAF serial was EF564. The RAF serial EE564 was not allocated to any Spitfire aircraft. I wonder how many books/websites contain references to Spitfire EE564 as a result of that error. Note I forgive the RAAF for that one because at the time those Spitfires arrived the RAAF was getting more aircraft in a week than they had received in most years prior to that and the poor blighter that typed up the history card would have been working from handwritten notes,plus all the other aircraft immediately following it were in the EE serial group.
• Archives file x is dated 193n and the archive dates it 1800 or the file title page clearly says x and they type in something totally different. I search multiple archives and the National Australian Archive are the only ones who do this to probably 5% of all files that I search for which makes searching !@#$%^& difficult. British and US archive site records contain a miniscule error rate.
• Web pages that contain a wealth of information but fail to proof read their content so that aircraft serial x is operated by xAF and yAF at the same time on the same page just a few lines apart, or is in location x and location y at the same time just a few lines apart, etc etc.

Interesting detail about A58-104/EF564 - as you say it seems like an understandable contemporary clerical error. I suppose archive-wise it depends on what you're looking for. For example, a lot of files in the National Archives at Kew consist of numerous different documents, varying wildly in date and content, sometimes entirely unrelated, bundled together under a single vague title. On cursory inspection, it might seem as though everything is neatly filed but lurking beneath extremely nondescript titles you can often find 'hidden gems'.

Anecdotally I understand that this is more pronounced where captured German documents are concerned, because they tend to be viewed as less valuable/worthwhile than documents relating to British topics.

Many of the documents used for Me 309 - you'll see them listed as 'ADRC/T-2', 'ADRC/MAP' or 'ADIK' - are only available on 78-79 year old microfilm. Accessing these and having sufficient time to read them is incredibly difficult unless you happen to have invested in your own digital microfilm scanner and have access to the physical reels themselves. It used to be possible to purchase complete copies of these reels (£30 each, plus postage) from NASM. Just working out which of the 4000 or so available reels to purchase in order to find the precise documents you wanted was tricky since even NASM's own catalogue only covers about half the reels - the rest are 'unknown contents' but it is possible, sometimes, to infer what's likely to be on a given reel.

You'd make an order, then three months later you'd get a jiffy in the post containing a white card box, within which was the plastic reel with the microfilm tape on, which you would then need to scan or get scanned - a lengthy process in its own right (and costly if you're paying a third party company to do the scanning). But then that service ended with Covid. If you have the Me 309 book, see if you can count how many different microfilm reels we used. Primary source research can be an expensive business!

Anyway, you can still check the microfilm-related references in our book if you go to NASM in person and ask to see the document we cite, using the code provided, e.g. ADRC/T-2 3604/123.

 

[MiTasol]

I have the advantage of my current dealings are all for my own interest
In the past I have bought a fair number of the NASM films but purely ones relating to aircraft blueprints and engineering processes so locating which ones cover the material is not so difficult. Sometimes it meant buying 20-30 rolls which was expensive but if I needed them I got them. I had my own A1 and A4 reader/printers so third party printing was not a problem.

I wish the NASM would take a leaf out of AFHRAs book and convert all the film to digital. It is far more user friendly for everyone concerned and prevents further damage to the original film. Fortunately there are a number of websites now that have done the conversions and you can download the pages.

The NASM does have a very detailed catalog of manuals for various aircraft and components and those were always provided as good quality photocopies. For the P-40 for instance the old index is many pages long containing 9 entries per page. More recent catalog printouts are 5 manuals per page and include the price of each manual.

AFHRA are great as they have converted most, maybe all, of their microfilm to PDF but the minor problem there is the index pages do not reflect the PDF pages because when converting to PDF they did not include the blank pages and sometimes the film frame numbers are missing*. That can be inconvenient but is still far better than having no sources at all. I have only found one set of errors in their catalog and that relates to General Kenneys diaries where the person back in the 50s who created the index for the specific microfilm screwed up. I can't blame AFHRA for that.

* The AFRHA microfilms had the index of contents in the last few frames and they photographed both the front and back of every sheet. Deleting the blank pages can throw the index out considerably so for some I created my own index which I shared with others. I only indexed items of interest to me and added notes.

I have not dealt with the USAF museum or AHEC for years but they were always excellent.

St Louis were slow but I never had a problem there.

My dealings with the PRO before the name change to National Archives at Kew were always easy and productive. Back then of coarse I was dealing with a person, not a computer, and asking for a specific document, usually an Air Publication, so that probably explains the difference from what you describe above.

Australian Archives are a mess. If you find a miss indexed item and ask for a clarification you seldom get a reply. I asked why an item would not download on Jun 3 and there auto-response says that

You book items for viewing a month in advance and travel 1,500km and the items are not available. What also really peeves me is the 300 km leg from Bundy to Brisbane costs double the 3 times further Brisbane Sydney sector and then the Sydney Canberra sector is often a hassle for some strange reason.

They tell you that you must not bend pages to photograph them so you pay them to "professionally" copy them for a ridiculous fee and the result is badly bent pages photographed under shit lighting. @#$%^&*

 

[Dan Sharp]

They tell you that you must not bend pages to photograph them so you pay them to "professionally" copy them for a ridiculous fee and the result is badly bent pages photographed under shit lighting. @#$%^&*

Sounds like the Australian Archives are a nightmare! And I completely empathise with the situation regarding 'professionally' copied images which seem to end up being anything but. That said, I've had good experiences with Kew - they have come up with decent copies of pages on numerous occasions.

 

[MiTasol]

Yeah. My experiences with the PRO and NASM have always been very enjoyable. Slow but great people and great product.

These are typical Aus Archives "professionally" copied items for the past 20 odd years. Before that they photocopied everything and the copies and staff were excellent.

Friday, Jun 14, I got a reply to my form submission of May 31 - see below - regarding files of 400 to 1200 pages that would not download. In their reply they are virtually asking an 80 year old for computer advice. I will make a polite answer which essentially means read the #$%^& manual and use Acrobats Reduce file size or Optimise scanned documents feature. They typically reduce scanned file sizes by 75-90%. I will not tell them that another ww2aircraft forum member provided me with a python script that downloads the jpg files straight to the computer at 5-10 pages per minute instead of manually taking hours at about one page per minute.

Given that they have still not corrected any of the over 100 file dating errors that I highlighted back before covid I do not expect any action. It probably needs months of committee meetings and budgetary discussions and approval by dozens of different management levels for such a simple directive as "all files over n Mb shall (or even can) be optimised" would get approved and then it would be ignored anyway like their own process standards that say pages shall not be folded or bent.