The Question of 2-2-V-1

[Tim Collins]

So where do you find one inch rivet pitch in .032" skin on an Electra?

Dunno yet. Stay tuned.

Farther forward of where previously thought?

[John Ousterhout]

Monty sez:  "...we all learned a lot about pre-WWII and WWII manufacturing methods. You never know when that may come in handy on Jeopardy on in Trivial Pursuit."

To which I'd add: "...Or on the next TIGHAR project."

[Kevin Weeks]

So where do you find one inch rivet pitch in .032" skin on an Electra?

Dunno yet. Stay tuned.

isn't that a fairly easy thing to discern?? what locations on the plane are being evaluated for a match?? the skin only??

[Ric Gillespie]

So where do you find one inch rivet pitch in .032" skin on an Electra?

Dunno yet. Stay tuned.

isn't that a fairly easy thing to discern??

Yes, if you have a Lockheed Electra handy.  Do you happen to have one?

what locations on the plane are being evaluated for a match?? the skin only??

The use of aerodynamically-friendly brazier rivets strongly suggests that the artifact is part of the external skin of some airplane.

[Monty Fowler]

Well, Kevin, until you've actually tried to do it, you might think it was fairly easy and straightforward.

Boots on the ground field exercises quickly teach you otherwise. It's like that game you played when you were a kid, Pick Up Sticks. Only instead of a dainty little plastic rod, you are handed a log a foot in diameter and 20 feet long.

LTM, who finds dry paint really interesting right now,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER

[James Champion]

So where do you find one inch rivet pitch in .032" skin on an Electra?

Dunno yet. Stay tuned.

Is if possible that a one inch rivet pitch was used in the fuselage skin because of the extra fuel tanks located there?

[Ric Gillespie]

So where do you find one inch rivet pitch in .032" skin on an Electra?

Dunno yet. Stay tuned.

Is if possible that a one inch rivet pitch was used in the fuselage skin because of the extra fuel tanks located there?

If you're asking whether the rivet pitch on NR16020 was different than on other Electras I would say no unless there is an engineering order to that effect that was approved by the Bureau of Air Commerce.

[Steve Lee]

It was mentioned somewhere upthread that there were additional photos of Alcoa aluminum markings in the 1941 edition of Aluminum in Aircraft.  I don't see those photos  anywhere on this thread, so I'm posting three of them here.  One photo is from page 22 and is credited to Douglas Aircraft; photos on pages 19 and 34 are credited to Lockheed (the clearest markings in the page 19 photo are at lower right hand corner of stamped piece of aluminum). Note that the page 34 photo is, I think, a view of another part of the same plane shown on page 33, which was previously posted on this thread here.  These three photos are constant with the 'old style' labelling we've seen in the other pre-war photos.

[Steve Lee]

The cover of Aluminum in Aircraft has a really neat photo of workers assembling a large wing, attached below. The wing appears to be heavily marked, but when I enlarged a section of this photo the markings were not clearly legible. I think this is once again 'old style' labeling, but perhaps I'm too biased to judge ::). I'll see if I can work on the cover photo and get a clearer view of the markings.

[JNev]

Good finds, Steve.  The wing production photos are very impressive in their own right, never mind fonts.  Whatever you can do with the image to bring out details would be great, but you may be limited in that it's from old printed matter and seems to have a heavy pixel effect.

Whatever the eventual outcome of fonts, etc. where 2-2-V-1 is concerned, I'm grateful for the process at work in this review.  To me it is a good demonstration of what TIGHAR is about IMO - digging for the most objective evidence that can be found in these pursuits.  "How we go about it" is what is so vital to me.

It can't be easy coming up with all these old images, I'm astonished at the amount of effort going into that and glad to see the product of it.

[Mark Appel]

Good finds, Steve.  The wing production photos are very impressive in their own right, never mind fonts.  Whatever you can do with the image to bring out details would be great, but you may be limited in that it's from old printed matter and seems to have a heavy pixel effect.

I agree with Jeff; those pics are wonderful. But it's going to be difficult if not impossible to get clarity of small detail. The highly pixelated print imagery just doesn't have a lot of information to process. In fact it's not even pixelated in the manner we think of today. That stuff was low-res even for the time--newsprint level. I'm sure there's some processing software out there that can make a stab at it, but it's not on my PC... I think Photoshop has some crude capability in this area... that might work.

[Paul Chattey]

It might be worth re-scanning the cover photo using, if you have it, the "descreen" function on your scanner software.  Epson and Canon scanners offer that option.

[JNev]

It might be worth re-scanning the cover photo using, if you have it, the "descreen" function on your scanner software.  Epson and Canon scanners offer that option.

Steve Lee,

Can you do this?  Would be good to wring all we can out of the cover photo, which is a very neat find.

That's not to question your objectivity, just for the sake of getting clearest possible picture for the most information that can be had.

Thanks Paul for this idea, and thanks, Steve, for whatever you might be able to do.

[Steve Lee]

It might be worth re-scanning the cover photo using, if you have it, the "descreen" function on your scanner software.  Epson and Canon scanners offer that option.

A person far wiser than I* in the ways of digital imaging suggested just that. I don't have a scanner -- I borrowed one to image to cover and didn't have an opportunity to try all the options with that one.  When I have a chance to work on this, which may be a while, I will see what I can do with a better scanner than the one I first tried with. 

~~~
*--or is it than me? Hmmnn....

[John Ousterhout]

Has anyone asked for the original photograph?  Newspaper companies tend to keep originals for a very long time, in my limited experience (as the son of a newspaper editor).  It might be worth asking...