The Spangenberg Index at Archives II (College Park)

[MKSheppard]

You guys might not know who George Spangenberg was.

He was at the US Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics, then at NAVAIR, then later BuWeps for several decades.

He's pretty well known for being a leading anti-F-111 person, and later helping set up the F-14 program.

But what wasn't known was that he saved EVERYTHING that crossed his desk.

When he left, it was accessioned over to the National Archives; and recently (2007), a large portion of it was declassified and made public for the first time.

I found this out by checking out the "Red Binders" on the Textural Floor; and found a line entry in it saying:

"Proposal" Files for Airplanes, Helicopters and Missiles 1934-1961
RG 72 (Bureau/Dept of Aeronautics)
UD 1048
ID 163451
Sec Class: C
NAII 631 74/63/04 to 75/9/07
1 to 676 Containers (!!!)
ACC NN3-72-86-4

Out of sheet anal-intensiveness, I pulled the very last box in the series and worked my way backwards.

Which was very lucky.

The last box turned out to contain the folder index for the whole series.

And when I say index, I do mean index. As in 360+ separated pages.

I made a copy of it via my camera -- it took me about 15 minutes of clicking the shutter.

LINK TO INDEX

Anyway, from reading the index; the boxes are arranged with no real reason or rhyme.

While like stuff is generally kept together, there is a very schizophrenic method of organization.

For example, you go from Helicopter proposals to the Bomber Defense Missile, then back to Helicopters.

Or you get folders and boxers of "N-180 Observation airplane"; and then out of nowhere, a proposal for V-408 Crusader fighter bomber, then back to observation, then wow an AEW.

BIG IMPORTANT NOTE

The entire 676 box series wasn't totally declassified! There are still significant gaps in declassification, meaning quite a bit of material is locked off to us.

The current list of Declassified Boxes (as Summer 2007)

1-358
361
363-369
374-419
421-432
434-435
438
443-447
452-453
471
478
482
484-487
500-520
522-535
537-541
544-552
560-564
566
570
572
578
580-583
585-586
588-593
597-598
600-606
608-615
617-618
620-621
623-624
626-628
630-645
647-653
655-664
672-676

I started to build a more cleaner finding aid a while ago; but sort of gave up after about 20 boxes.

Boxes 601-End

Green means Unclassified, RED is classified.

[Frank Hipper]

Someone out there should be paying you for the archival research you do, you know.