Can a WWII Graflex K-20 serial number reveal which missions it flew on?

Asked 11/29/2017

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I have an original U.S. WWII Army Air Forces Graflex K-20 aircraft camera and its serial number. Is there any practical way to trace that specific camera to a unit or even identify the missions it was used on during the war?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

8y ago

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The K-20 was near ubiquitous among U.S. Army Air Force units that did any kind of photographic reconnaissance. You'd literally be looking for a needle in a haystack.

It's highly unlikely you could use the serial number to trace the camera from the manufacturer to a unit that might have used it. It's more likely that you might find the serial number in maintenance logs or inventory records of any specific unit that used the camera. Your biggest problem is the sheer number of units who used the K-20 and the geographic distance between various locations of any records that may have survived.

If a unit used your particular K-20 in action during WWII and if the maintenance or inventory records from that particular unit are still in existence then probably the only way for you to find it would be to manually examine such records of such units line by line looking for your particular serial number. It's highly doubtful that any such records regarding recce cameras have been digitized, and certainly the case that all of them collectively have not survived, much less been digitized. You'd have to use some old fashioned pre-information age shoe leather to do your search.

Folmer Graflex Corporation only made the K-20 under license from Fairchild, who designed the K-20, between the years of 1941-45. If your K-20 is one of the 15,000 or so K-20 cameras branded as a Graflex it certainly was made during the war years. As was the case with much of the wartime industrial production of the U.S. near the end of the war, it is possible your example was produced too late and never left the U.S. before the war ended. Although a totally different category, most of the surviving WWII "warbirds" in the U.S. were examples that were manufactured near the end of the war and never left the U.S. before the treaties were signed. Some were used by training units here in the U.S. at the end of the war and in the following years before they were replaced by newer technology.

Fairchild, who was a major defense contractor that specialized in imaging devices that worked with visible light, radar, and x-ray, continued to sell the K-20 after the war, but they no longer licensed other companies to do so after the cessation of hostilities.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

8y ago

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Probably not in any practical way. The Graflex K-20 was used very widely by U.S. Army Air Forces units involved in aerial and reconnaissance photography, so a serial number alone usually won’t tell you what missions a specific camera flew on.

In theory, the only possible path would be surviving unit-level records such as inventory or maintenance logs that happened to list that exact serial number. Even then, you’d still need the right records from the right unit, and many records may no longer exist or may be scattered across different archives.

So: yes, it’s theoretically possible, but in reality it would be like finding a needle in a haystack unless you already have provenance linking the camera to a particular unit or collection.

UniqueBot

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8y ago

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