Warbird Information Exchange

Contact one of the government offcies about that. Having the airframes sent to you is better than them disappearing.

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My racing will fund my warbirding. Hopefully...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/ChristopherDeshongRacing
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Chris, you say many are being saved. Which ones are being saved and where are they going? If I was a betting man, I would put money down right now saying 75% or more of the planes the museum is releasing will be scrap within 18 months. And I dont see them getting a B-17 anytime soon. Its a bad situation all the way around and I dont see any silver linings! I have said it here a few times before, within 10 years there will be another mass scrapping of WW2 aircraft including the P-38 in N.J.

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

As for people saying their is no funds to save these planes or people are unwilling to, I disagree. The people who do have the funds are excluded from even being able to get the aircraft in the first place. The USAFM's policy of aircraft going to private museums is completely counter intuitive to saving any aircraft owned by the USAFM.

To receive any aircraft from the USAFM you must:

Have at least one full time PAID employee
You do not own the plane
You can not operate the plane, not even to just taxi it
You must pay for everything for the plane
They can take the plane from you on any whim and you will lose all money invested into said plane.

The museum I belong to has been interested in many aircraft that were owned by the USAFM. But we can't get a single one because we don't employ a single person, let alone full time. We are a large group of people who VOLUNTEER and restore our aircraft to operate at airshows. Without those airshows, we wouldn't be able to do any work as those airshows pay the bills for the aircraft and fund the other restorations.

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Tyler Pinkerton
Active Member of Air Heritage Inc. of Beaver Falls, PA.
Aircraft: C47B, C-123K, Fairchild F-24, Funk Model B, L-21B, T-28B, T-34B
Static: F-4C Phantom II, F-15A, T-3 Provost

The MK-53 Lightning went to Pima last year, the F-84 Starfire is in storage at DM, and the F-100F is going to the Pacific Aviation Museum. A drop in the bucket but it's a start.

But then the question is, how many examples do we preserve with tax payer money?

I'm all for preserving historic aircraft. I donate where I can, and try and save and record the history wherever I can find it. But I don't believe it's 'the gubmints' problem to make sure we save every last example. I'm grateful we have the Air & Space Museum, the USAF Museum and the Navy's Museum. I do believe we have a responsibility to preserve our heritage. But there has to be a limit as the money isn't there.

Again, if these birds matter then private money needs to get involved.

I agree that outside of a key couple of national collections, I don't think this is a top priority for the tax payers' money. On the other hand, the government is inhibiting an influx if private funds to help solve the problem by not allowing those with private funds the ability to own the aircraft outright. In many cases those with means arent't interested in investing in a situation with the previously stated risks of having the aircraft taken away, not being able to sell it later, not being able to operate the aircraft, etc. I doubt you are I would be interested in investing in preserving an old car without some sort of reassurances that we have basic ownership rights. While it isn't up to the government to save them all, they are responsible for the policies around private ownership of them. In this case our beloved government would rather scrap them than allow a private citizen to own them. While changing these policies wouldn't ensure they would all be saved, it could save some.

Just thinking out loud here, and this may well be "tilting at windmills", but we have a pretty wide swath of experienced folks from all walks of life on this particular board, including lawyers and such. In light of tightening budgets and the potential loss of historic artifacts, maybe this might be an opportune time to begin a "charm offensive" with high-ranking officials both civilian and military, pointing out the tangible and intangible benefits of selling such artifacts deemed "excess to needs" to private groups or individuals. A good example would be the F-86 or F-89 at Warner Robins... there was a group looking to get a Scorpion airborne not too long ago, and with the right backing, that could actually happen. This would be a terrific opportunity to actually get something beyond scrap value for these aircraft, and of course there should be clear and unambiguous language releasing the government from any and all responsibility for the aircraft once it's sold, etc.

What's the worst that could happen- they say no?

Lynn

Unfortunately, some clown member of Congress will probably say we can't arm our citizens (or potentially those of other nations) with "military-grade weapons" or some crap like that.

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Matt

Lynn,

I think that there have been a whole host of folks over the years that have tried to make something like that happen. The problem is, outside of some very specific instances where folks have achieved the goal of private legislation being passed by Congress to benefit them specifically (see Pirate Lex and his Corsair and Collings and their F-4 as examples), there has been an inability of our community to accomplish a broad solution.

I have argued several times (and will continue to argue) that the NMUSAF and the NMNA should start a process of auctioning off, over the next 5 years, airplanes that are surplus to their collections (like the several B-17s displayed outdoors and the SBDs sitting at the bottom of Lake Michigan), with 100% of the proceeds to go to those museums for the restoration of rare aircraft in their collections that need to be restored for display. It would be a win-win, as private museums and collectors would gain access to a new body of airframes for their uses, and these two premier government museums would gain access to a new stream of funding in a tight fiscal climate. The public would gain increased access to the surplus airframes, and the museums would be able to accelerate the restoration of some pretty neat airplanes (like the Swoose) that played critical roles in our nation's history. There is precedent for this concept, albeit overseas, in the form of the British government removing the numerous Spitfires from outdoor display at bases several years ago and replacing them with fiberglass replicas.

Sadly, I think that it will take an act of Congress (literally) to make that happen, as I believe that the two museum's hands will have to be forced. If they haven't done that on their own to this point, I'm doubtful that they will do so in the future.

kevin

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FOUND the elusive DT-built B-24! Woo-hoo!!!

Oh, the F-94 at Davis-Monthan was in the photo by Vlado in the Heritage Flight Conference thread. Glad to see a few being taken care of, hope they can save some more!

I hope someone takes the Kaman H-43A. It's a rare piston powered predessor of the Huskie...a USAF HOK.
Perhaps a Navy/Marine museum will take it. Better a repaint than scrapped.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

Appears to be a strip of dirt in a flood plain?

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Those who possess real knowledge are rare.

Those who can set that knowledge into motion in the physical world are rarer still.

The few who possess real knowledge and can set it into motion of their own hands are the rarest of all.

I was tooling around on Google Earth tonight and noticed an F-84 (52-8837) that was a guard gate at the airport in Richmond, VA for several years. It's gone now, along with an F-105 (61-0050) and an A-7 (72-0192) that were also displayed with the F-84. All three are now at AMARC. I couldn't find any discussion about them, but the aerial visuals dossier on the site (http://www.aerialvisuals.ca/LocationDos ... erial=3958) shows both the Thud and the Corsair II dismantled and loaded up for AMARC.

Any idea if the Thud or F-84 were offered to the Virginia Aviation Museum across the field? They already have an A-7 (parked in front, visible on GE).

edit: Found some discussion here about the F-105: viewtopic.php?p=442354

second edit: interesting discussion here (http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-8627.html) on that -105 having "two cracked wings and one cracked fuselage mount" and then this: "I remember late in the -105 days when parts were hard to come by, and before 61-0050 was mounted on a stick, the bosses would say "take it off balls 50". I was always afraid that I would be the one who removed the nut, bolt, or screw that made the whole airplane collapse around me. That jet is just a shell. Absolutely nothing in it except skin. Hell, they even painted it grey! Nobody asked me for my opinion when it came to painting it..."

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And I withdraw my earlier comment about the RB-69 being "rare" since it is in fact P2V-7 BuNo 147954 just painted as a tribute to the real 54-4037 which was shot down by China in 1964.

It seems a number of aircraft mentioned here have already disappeared from the list of exhibits on the museum's website. At least that makes a change from many museum websites, which often hardly ever seem to be updated.
But such sad news. Warner Robins (am I the first one to mention its location here? I'm not sure how many 'museums of aviation' the OP knows, but I can think of at least 100 off-hand) had been on my 'to do' list for quite a while, and now they're doing away with many of the exhibits I wanted to go photograph. And then I hadn't even realised how wide-ranging their post-war collection really was.
If I may be egotistical: I hope at least the propliners get saved, but if there weren't any takers for the GTD-21 even...