M.A.N. 1958 U-2 Plans Posted

[Lotus-14]

I have uploaded a plan from Model Airplane News of the Lockheed U-2 dated March 1958.
I found this copy in some file boxes of saved model plans in my basement.  The drawing is on old yellowed and stained newsprint, and was torn in half, but I thought it would be fun to relate the story of these plans to those of you who weren't alive when Gary Powers was shot down May 1, 1960.
This plan from MAN, was on the front page of the New York Times, with an article about how model airplane builders had known about the U-2 for 2 years before anyone else.
Of course that was not true, but the fact that there were drawings of the plane in a hobby magazine two years before the general public knew about it, made a lot of us feel pretty smug.  I was in high school when the magazine came out, and in college when Powers was shot down.
I am trying to search through my collection and get some drawings onto the web site.  I had many hundreds of old magazine and kit plans, but unbeknown to me, I suffered water damage, because of an extra wet winter.  I lost boxes and boxes of plans, magazines, and books; a lot of which are irreplaceable. Throwing out every issue of Flying Aces was pretty traumatic.  Because of that, I have been trying to scan and save what I can.  Unfortunately there was lots of mold, and particularly with slick clay coated paper and newsprint, much of it stuck together so you end up with a solid block.  Oh well.
In any case I will try to put some interesting stuff on the site; having learned the hard way, that they don't do anyone any good if they can't be used..

[lastvautour]

Thank you for sharing.

Lou

[animek]

Thanks for all the nice plans, ships and planes.  Very much appreciated!

[Balsabasher]

Many thanks Lotus for your efforts to save these plans,there is an organisation that deals with water damaged papers etc,they freeze the print and detach layer by layer,most insurance companies cover this but do not make punters aware of the service to save on their costs,I saw it being done on television recently,old photographs and documents stuck together can be repaired,a real pity about those Flying Aces drawings,solid modellers take note of Lotus's plight and get those plans in the archives for the future,the safest place for them is cyberspace ! pulp mags fall apart after time as there is a lot of acid in that paper,they degrade to nothing,at the least do a few copies of each plan and store in ring binders or folders,acid can be removed from old comics but is an expensive and time consuming process,store dry as you can in plastic folders,place silica gel strips between pages and watch out for moths and insect damage,heat sealing is another course,you can purchase home brew heat sealers,the older material is well worth the trouble as we will never be able to replace it,so duplicate ( no copyright after 25 years UK at least ) store in retrieval systems,add to SMM archives,bck up with discs that are numbered and filed for reference.
Barry.