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This is a pretty huge find as British archiving of various WWII blueprints and manuals were not the greatest post-war so many were lost or scattered across the country so to find such a large and complete collection that has been gone for so long is a huge boost to restorers, museums and historians and they have been digitized and now will be used in the restoration of a Mosquito once they have been fully processed.
They came very close to being destroyed.
The complete collection of drawings on microfilm weighs close to 150 pounds.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...-mosquito-plans-will-allow-wooden-wonder-fly/

A newly-discovered hoard of secret Second World War aircraft technical drawings will be used by enthusiasts to rebuild and launch a Mosquito plane into the skies above Britain.

More than 20,000 wartime Mosquito engineering drawings and diagrams have been found in the corner of a wartime factory just days before bulldozers were due to flatten it.

The archive includes what are thought to be the world’s only complete set of engineering drawings for the plane, as well as details of variants that never made it off the drawing board.

The drawings, on microfilm cards, have been donated to a charity hoping to restore and fly a crashed version of the versatile, twin-engined, de Havilland aircraft.

The charity behind the project, The People’s Mosquito, said the documents provided invaluable technical details needed to rebuild their plane to strict aviation safety standards.

John Lilley, chairman, said the drawings had been found earlier this year by an engineer just before the former de Havilland building in Broughton, near Chester, was to be demolished.

He said: “He understood the tremendous historic value in these engineering drawings and how useful they could be. The building itself was soon to be demolished and the contents discarded.

“It’s incredible to think that they might have been lost forever.”

20,000 technical drawings were found, including this for ‘Mosquito Mk I, Tropics’

Ross Sharp, engineering director for the project, said: “As you can imagine, restoring an aircraft that is 70 years old presents several challenges, one of which is a lack of information on the building techniques, materials, fittings and specifications.”

“These plans enable us to glean a new level of understanding and connection with the brilliant designers who developed the world’s first, true, multi-role combat aircraft.”

To preserve scarce metal reserves and for speed of production, the plane was made from pieces of wood, pressed and glued together in moulds, earning it the nickname ‘The Wooden Wonder’. Exactly 7,781 were eventually built, the last one on November 15, 1950. 6,710 of them were delivered during WWII.

Herman Goering, Germany’s wartime aviation minister, said the aircraft turned him “green and yellow with envy”.

New discoveries include early planes to carry torpedoes, possibly to attack the Tirpitz, and a previously unknown photo-reconnaissance plane.

Only three Mosquitos are today in flying condition, one in Canada and two in America.

The restoration will cost an estimated £6m, with only a fraction of the money raised so far.

You can learn more about the team that received the blueprints and that are restoring a Mosquito here who have been struggling to raise money for the restoration.
http://www.peoplesmosquito.org.uk

http://www.peoplesmosquito.org.uk/2017/06/09/chairmans-project-update/
Drawing Archive
In October the project received a huge donation, not in monetary terms, but in technical and historical terms by being given 22,000+ aperture cards containing D.H.98 technical drawings. No full set exists in the World to date and it is believed we may have been given the ‘missing’ drawings from the days when Mosquito T.III RR299 was in operation via BAE. The drawings were donated by Airbus Broughton, as the office they were located in was scheduled to be demolished to make way for new buildings. We have spent £4K having the cards digitised to preserve them and we are currently working our way through this maze of technical information. To date, thanks to a herculean effort by Ross Sharp, we have seen Circa 2000 drawings and discovered unknown facts and information on the Mosquito. The project now needs to have a strategy in how we turn this legacy into funds and also how it supports our re-build. The CAA has been informed and are delighted we have original drawings to support our rebuild.

The cost to digitise and catalogue the drawings was double, if not more the cost we paid. Therefore, the drawings require cataloguing and cross-referencing to turn them into a useful valuable resource. We are very keen to hear from anyone who wishes to volunteer to help us with this cataloguing process? Please contact us at volunteers@peoplesmosquito.org.uk

https://aircorpslibrary.com is a large online library of more than 100,000 drawings and manuals for various US WWII aircraft that anyone can go through and access with a paid monthly subscription so I'm hoping the People's Mosquito organization does something similar so anyone could go through them and they'd generate some revenue doing so.

Lock if old.