Avn-Tech wrote:
I started collecting aircraft manuals in 1995, and there were 3-4 companies around at that time.
At one time there was Esco East & Esco West. I believe that Esco west was the son of the original founder.
Thanks for all of the history!
Avn-Tech wrote:
Some of my manuals are copies from the old Air Caravan seller.
I am not familiar with Air Caravan. Could you provide more information about who they were?
Avn-Tech wrote:
I probably have the most complete database of manuals out there. I list manual Number, date of issue, last change date and title for each manual in my collection. My database also list manuals I have seen someplace else (in red, as reference). I tried to attach an example, but i can not attach an excel file to my message.
Unfortunately, there's no way to attach anything other than an image file to a WIX post. However, I'd really love to see the complete list. If you're willing to share it, you can find my email address on the
about page of my personal website.
Aside from the original wartime
Numerical Index of Technical Publications, T.O.
00-1, the only other similar list I am aware of is the
Military Manual Index compiled by Mike Smith on the Aircraft Engine Historical Society website. So an additional reference would be very useful.
Subsets of SourcesIn addition to the standard providers of aircraft manuals - the ones dedicated solely to aircraft manuals - there are two other, less obvious sources:
General Government Declassification SitesThese include efforts like the
Paperless Archives,
Public Intelligence,
Liberated Manuals.com and the eBay store
Filmsdocs. Their goal is to make any government documents, not just aircraft manuals, available to the public. However, even though their focus is broader, military aircraft manuals, as a subset of the category "government documents", get swept up in the collection. Instead of scanning original paper manuals, these sources obtain their copies from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. One of the benefits of these sites is that, unlike most other sources, there is no need to double check with them for permission before reusing the materials they have posted since it is clear from their mission that they want them to be distributed without restriction.
Individual CollatorsThese are people who make lists or collections of manuals, although they frequently don't do the scanning themselves. However, they are generally not in the "business" to make money and make their manuals available for free, rather than selling them. For example, the other day, while searching for more sources, I came across a
reddit thread, which led me to a
website which had links to other sources. These include the
type specific technical orders page on the USAF SIG website, the
manuals page on the AirWar website and the user
mandolinmagi on the Internet Archive. Other examples include the user "
micrdow" in the
Technical section of the WW2Aircraft forum and Ron Downey of the blog
Aviation Archives.
Interestingly, much of the growth in this category has been driven by video games like War Thunder, as players seek out manuals for the vehicles they are controlling on their computer - either to better understand them or to correct technical errors in the models of said vehicles. The latter has led to an unfortunate phenomena that began in July 2021, where still-classified materials have been released. This problem is
sufficiently extensive that it has led to frequent jokes (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6) on the subject. The standard protection to the problem of confidential information among dedicated manual providers seems to be a blank prohibition on reproducing manuals less than 10 years old.