Rohan said:
The NOC already have those prewar records - the NOC Factory Records Project is in the process of having all those indecipherable scribblings computerised. Seems to have disappeared into thin air though, that was some years ago now.....
Those pre-war records are nearly complete. I volunteered to transcribe some records, and was shipped a packet of photocopies of the original log books, and an Excel spreadsheet to fill in.
I was given the 5 weeks or so from about 4-9-39 to 6-10-39, which comprised about 1200 machines. It took over a year for me to do, and when I turned it in early this year, Chris Streather wrote back to say he only had a handful of records needed to complete the project.
The log book was handwritten, apparently by pen and inkwell, and often took a magnifying glass to interpret. One record that was particularly baffling to me was an order of six machines sent to a Police Department. It took a week to figure it the name 'Sleightholme'
If anybody has a machine from that time period, I can tell something about it. Those pre-war records had columns to record build card number, model, engine, frame, gearbox, forks, whether it had a mag or mag-dyno and over a dozen other bits of info, such as Kickstart (Y/N), gate or foot change, wheel type, tyre size, etc.
After 8 September, the bulk of production was for either the RAF or WD, and almost exclusively models 16H, 16HK and 18. The factory worked that Sunday, 10 September, and every Saturday. Most of the WD records only show build card, model, engine, frame, gearbox, Mag/Mag-dyno, and forks. Half the time, model wasn't even recorded.