Even though this is slightly off topic, it is also a warning to groups that preserve massive amounts of paper. A larger number of drawings were destroyed at the Virginia Museum of Transportation in the flood of November 1985, there was no disaster plan of attempting to freeze or preserve the wet material.

The military records mentioned above, to set the record straight, were not destroyed in a flood, but a massive fire. Here is the story from the National Archives:
https://www.archives.gov/personnel-reco ... /fire-1973

The fact that the fire burned uncontrolled for 22 hours is, in itself, pretty amazing.

The only reason I know of this is that my father understood his records (USN-World War II) were destroyed and while researching it, after his passing, learned that it was Army and Air Force records, not Navy records.

The archival loss of such records, in addition to the Virginia Museum of Transportation ones should be a sobering lesson to all of us who deal in paperwork.

N&WHS has been working very hard to preserve as many drawings, phots and such over the years, and has well over 200,000 items cataloged on line, but there remains a large amount of material to be cataloged and scanned.

Here is an example of one of the lesser damaged drawings from where it had been wet and the coating on the linen is simply shedding when you handle it.

https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=212307

Best
Ken Miller