I came across a
really good paper today about the warbird community. Among a bunch of excellent analyses, was this highly relevant paragraph:
In pursuing the aim of making the airplane just like it was, fitting the token to the type, warbirders draw on the authority of both received schema of the type and the qualities of the airframe/token itself. When restoring an aircraft to be/of particular type, the schemata guide the remaking of the material object. The restoration work on CD, for example, was guided not only by skilled mechanics and pilots who drew on long-ago experience with C- 46's or similar aircraft, but also by a collection of blueprints which lent their schematic authority to the Wing’s work on the airplane. If they were ever challenged on the correctness of their restoration, they could pull out those blueprints. Such has never occurred with CD because the object’s connection to its wartime production as a token of the type is relatively well-documented. Even when the material object is radically altered by adding all-new materials, however, the object’s typological identity (and therefore its claim to historicity) can remain intact if the object fits the schema, or the ideal form, of the type. Warbirders often alternate between attending to the token’s fit with the type’s schema and to its documentary connection to the type in tracing their referential connection to the wartime airplanes. Indeed, the alternation between these modes of identification allows restorers to cover ruptures in the airframe’s connection to the past, as with the Hellcat, as well as with aircraft “built around” a data plate. Only when a connection is entirely severed does the ontological status of the aircraft come into question. When the connection fails, the airplane will be called a “reproduction.” For example, one company has built a number of World War II German jets using an “original” as a model. In that case no material linkage to an original airplane can be produced, but the schema — drawn from an object as model — matched exactly. Similarly, when an aircraft deviates from the schema, its type identity might be challenged, rendering it a “replica,” like the ½ scale home-built kits that exist. The tension between the current instantiation of a warbird and the material and schematic link to the type provide the basis for much debate within warbirding about authenticity, replication, and reproduction.
It seems to support the reproduction/replica division along level of authenticity, rather than connection to the original builder, lines. Or, rather, it supports the notion that this is the way the division is
understood within the community - whether or not it is accurate. As a matter of fact, based on the rest of the paper, the level of authenticity division seems to contrast with the author's own understanding of the subject - although it is worth noting that he does not explicitly make a judgement call as to which interpretation is "correct".
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