Aviation
Archaeology Resources
Aircraft Inspection Stamps
Aircraft Inspection Stamps, also known
as Quality Assurance Stamps, are stamps that the manufactures
stamp into a part once a Quality Insurance Inspector has inspected
the part and deemed it acceptable to go on a production aircraft.
To the aviation archaeologist they are extremely useful in
helping to identify an aircraft at a crash site. Even if a
few fragments remain, but the stamp is found the aircraft
manufacture is know known. Special thanks to Walt Witherspoon
who took this project and ran with it, spending many hours
of his own time going to museums, getting permission, and
crawling through aircraft looking for stamps. He also created
all of the drawings of the stamps. We are in the process of
taking digital images of these stamps and will be adding them
to this web page soon.
Part Number Prefix By
Manufacturer
Part number prefix will identify the specific
type of aircraft, but you still should determine aircraft
manufacture first from Inspection Stamps as some numbers overlap
between manufactures. Boeing being one example as all of their
aircraft use all numbers so they overlap all other manufactures
numbers. Thus this list is listed by aircraft manufacture.
Part Number Prefix
By Aircraft Type
Same list as above, but listed by aircraft
type. This list is useful if one is looking for a specific
crash and wants to know what prefix numbers to expect. Or
if no inspection stamps are found you can look up a suspected
type. If it often possible to have a best guess as to fighter
or bomber, prop or jet, USAF or USN, by the crash site. For
specifics on how to do this I would suggest taking one of
our weekend aviation archaeology courses. For the reasons
listed in the paragraph above, a list just in numeric order
would be too unwieldy as every Boeing product would be listed
for every number etc.
Aero Part Identify Board
an International Board to identify unknown
aircraft parts from crash sites. You have a part from a crash
you need to identify? Try here.
Aviation Archaeology
Contact List
This is a listing of people interested in aviation archaeology
and their contact information. The idea behind the list is
to help find other people in your area that you can team up
with on searches, research, etc.
To add your name to the list please e-mail
your information to
aair@aviationarchaeology.com
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Aviation Archaeological Investigation and Research.
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