Swedish Air Force Museum Photo Album

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of a 42-page photo album, , containing 69 color photographs documenting a collection of historic aviation artifacts assembled by Flygvapnet (the Swedish Air Force) at Malmen Airbase in Malmslätt, just outside Linköping, Sweden. The aircraft are all pictured outdoors (presumably at the airbase); smaller artifacts are seen close up, indoors.

Arrangement

The photo album is presented in original order.

In 1984, the materials in this collection were photographed for reproduction on NASM Archival Videodisc 2. The "videodisc frame capture" images reproduced here are small 100 ppi RGB JPEG image files, 624 x 480 pixels each, created 2001-2003 by NASM Archives as still video frame captures of the NTSC video format output from an original copy of the videodisc. Each videodisc frame capture displays a black-edged white number in the upper left quadrant; the first two digits (00) are the videodisc chapter (not used on NASM videodiscs), the second set of five digits are the videodisc frame number. These numbers are an artifact produced by the videodisc player and do not appear on the original archival materials.

Biographical / Historical

The Swedish Air Force, Flygvapnet, was created on July 1, 1926, when the aircraft units of the Swedish Army and Navy were merged. As aviation technology developed, older aircraft types in service were replaced with newer models; in the 1940s, two of the Flygvapnet commanders at Malmen Airbase began to save the old aircraft rather than scrapping them, eventually adding engines, cameras, and other aircraft equipment to the collection. In the late 1960s, a new storage facility was built in the Ryd district of Linköping, to allow the public to come and view the growing collection of airplanes and other artifacts which had previously been located in a restricted military area. This collection of artifacts formed the core of Flygvapenmuseum (the Swedish Air Force Museum), established in 1977 as part of the Statens försvarshistoriska museer (SFHM, Swedish Defense History Museums) (SFHM, Swedish Defense History Museums), and opened in Malmslätt to visitors in 1984.