Warbird Information Exchange

I seem to remember hearing that a lot of those Bird Dogs were exported to a concern in Australia.... anyone got any news on that?

Cheers,
Richard

PS. Any id on that engine-less Bearcat?

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

Any idea how difficult it is to export aircraft from Thailand ?

As recently as 2004 a rascal in the Houston area was trying to get a group of "investors" to import some of those bird-dogs.

Interesting to see that they really existed, and I'm glad he didn't have those pictures because the rascal was STILL a rascal!

SPANNER

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Support Your Local Warbirds! KBO!
The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

It would seem that at least one Spitfire has been exported from Thailand in recent times (last 12 months or so). I also understand that a number of other aircraft, types unknown to me at this point, have made it to the UK, USA and Australia.

The Rascal involed is the same person who imported a large quantity of Nanchangs from China into Australia. The investors in that episode have described their disapointment to me on a number of occassions.

As always, it's not what you know but who you know and how much you are prepared to pay. Thats not a criticism, just and observation.


Shelldrake

Back in the mid 80's there was a DFW based effort to bring a large number of the Birddogs stateside from there. Unfortunately the $ numbers got to be way out of whack for the value of the a/c at the time. They were going to end up being something like $30K each on the shop floor in the DFW area. I was told that of the a/c that were being looked at, some could be put back in the air quickly, but that most would need to be IRANed before being flyable. They did end up bringing a couple out for personal projects, but passed on going after the rest.