Convair Model 48 Charger

fightingirish said:
Today new pictures showing the General Dynamics/Convair Charger Model 48 mock-up were uploaded at the SDASM Flickr Archives.
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Inasmuch as I love the Charger and am thrilled by the hundreds of great pictures of it at SDASM, I think we've had more than enough, and wonder why the Convair archives have so much to share on that relatively minor type in Convair history, and so little on other, more prominent programs. There are many other Convair designs and projects/prototypes that could do with more photos on the SDASM site.
 
They are just scanning the entire collection one by one, there's no curation really. Also, the quantity of photos in the collection may bear no resemblance to the importance of the program.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
They are just scanning the entire collection one by one, there's no curation really. Also, the quantity of photos in the collection may bear no resemblance to the importance of the program.
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I'd argue that the number of photos of a subject is inversely proportional to the classification level of the subject.
 
Stargazer said:
Inasmuch as I love the Charger and am thrilled by the hundreds of great pictures of it at SDASM, I think we've had more than enough, and wonder why the Convair archives have so much to share on that relatively minor type in Convair history, and so little on other, more prominent programs. There are many other Convair designs and projects/prototypes that could do with more photos on the SDASM site.
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I tend to agree, there are MANY more interesting Convair projects. I have often felt that one of the reasons so much of the Charger info and data has been made public (and so quickly) can be attributed to a bit of corporate bitterness and/or face saving after losing out to the OV-10.

I very often feel that the Charger program info is presented with a bit of a defensive air, as if to say "See how much better this was than the Bronco? We got hosed...", which may very well be true. Political decisions are often inexplicable...

Of course this view is entirely subjective on my part, and has nothing to do with the aircraft data, which is, of course, just data. It is just a feeling I get from the apologetic tone of many of the sources.
 
FYI, a few more pictures showing the General Dynamics/Convair Charger Model 48 were uploaded at SDASM flickr Archives today.
But today I won't post any inserted pictures, since most of these pictures have already been posted either in this topic or on front cover of a book / magazine before. ;)
 
Stargazer said:
wonder why the Convair archives have so much to share on that relatively minor type in Convair history, and so little on other, more prominent programs.
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In short: "They got what they got." Convair didn't keep a true and complete archive as Boeing has done; the SDASM basically only has what's donated to them. And this is of course after the first iteration of the archive was burned to the ground by a loonie. So perhaps years ago they *had* boxes and boxes of, say, Super Hustler and Kingfish, and those documents, blueprints and photos got converted to carbon dioxide and water vapor. The Charger photos only came along later when an employee who worked on Charger and who smuggled home boxes of photos, keeled over and his kids donated the stuff.

It'd be nice if the world was otherwise, but often you just have to make do with scraps.
 

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