Warbird Information Exchange

Criminal!!! You must be joking. These aircraft are incredibly original airframes. You need to have some of them preserved like that. Not everything should be made to fly again. Don't get me wrong, I love flyers, but you would have to replace so much on these birds to get them flying again. I'd much rather have a mostly non-original flyer come from a bad wreck, than one of these aircraft.

The spitfire even has its original WWII paint on it. It's a Battle of Britain survivor too. Why would you want to get rid of all that history just so that it flies again? The zero has it original markings as well.

As far as not changing much, that's a load of rubbish too. True, the museum doesn't move its big exhibits that often, but the rest of the museum is constantly changing with different, highly detailed and interesting displays and themes. There's a great one in there at them moment on the Blitz. Honestly, there really is no pleasing some people.

Richard

Tom, Photograph number 2 is gondolier that was lowered though the clouds from a Zeppelin so that they could see what was going on below. Anyone know if that is the correct term? Gondolier?

Spitfire Mk.I. One of the most historic and original Spitfires left, including its 1944 paint, and with combat history from the Battle of Britain. A rebuild to fly would dispose of much of the original metal, most of those rivets and all of the historic paint (irreplaceable to future researchers in all cases).

Now that would truely special.......

There's two assumptions there, both of which may be correct, or not. My guess is that whether the original scheme was stripped or not, the latter scheme was applied properly; either keying the old scheme (which damages the paint significantly) or applying a primer and key over it, or quite possibly stripping it back. My other guess is that whatever is under the current scheme would be hard to get to, and won't look very nice, certainly not a full 1940 green and brown coat.

Destroying a 1944 scheme to get to a 1940 scheme on such a historic artefact is something the IWM may not feel mandated to do. It's a very different scenario from removing a inaccurate 1960s or 70s museum bodge paint.

I wonder if the IWM could do the same with the Spit that the FAA Museum did with their "time capsule" corsair. That would be awsome!

V-1 & V-2. Gee. What are we waiting for? Should be a blast at shows.

I've always hoped I'd live to see one of Earl Reinert's aircraft flying again.

Well, maybe not the Ohka