Warbird Information Exchange

Sorry for the resurrection of a 3 year old thread but MJ444 had its first post resto flight on the 6th June.

DCW on the UKAR forum caught sorties 2 and 3 on camera.

https://forums.airshows.co.uk/viewtopic ... 40#p967040

Any idea what happened to the original aircraft wreckage? Will it be displayed anywhere?

The trouble with doing that is that someone in the future could buy it and try to create another Spitfire...the best option, as some restorers have done, is to turn the pieces into keyrings, dogtags, etc and sell those to help fund the rebuild.

Perish the thought that another Spitfire might be restored! I'm guessing that anything usable was incorporated into the rebuild. Just like with the P-51 you can now build one from scratch without the benefit of any original parts. Why does this matter/why is this trouble?

Is this actually true? I believe they're making the complicated wing spars (the concentric box tubes) from scratch, but for some reason I thought there was something (perhaps the landing gear struts?) that still needed original parts. (And of course, if only someone would manufacture a new Merlin...) I'm just curious -

The problem is that it seems someone will inevitably try to claim that it is something it is not: an original. I don't think anyone is really complaining about the possibility of there being another flying Spitfire as long as they call a spade a spade. (As mentioned above, there's the preservation vs. restoration debate, but that doesn't really apply here because there isn't a significant amount of material to preserve.)

In less theoretical terms, articles from DOM magazine and RotorPro have some actual legal discussion.


See: Ship of Theseus or, more relevantly, F6F BuNo 40467.


I don't know the exact details, but Jerry Beck's P-51A "Precious Metal" comes to mind as an example.

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I wonder if I'm the only one pondering on the crass stupidity of this type of action? You turn the real thing into scrap so you can build a replica. Imagine if someone tried that with the Titanic? We have a long way to go before warbirds ("warbirds") can be taken as serious historical artefacts.

It reeks, and maybe it's time for this kind of crass vandalism to stop, or be liable for prosecution.

Some things like Merlins and instrumentation are in adequate supply so new parts aren't needed or cost effective. Many parts are adequately represented as spares stocks. I just visited the shop of an Allison rebuilder that had 30 or more Allisons in storage. There are great efforts to newly build some of the German engines however. This all relates to cost. You could build new landing gear, but why would you if you can find a set to repair or overhaul? When spares run out, they will be built. All this 1920s, 1930s and 1940s technology still exists and in fact is much better now.

You get into conflicts over which airframe is what. Another example is the P-51 mixup between this one: https://www.mustangsmustangs.com/p-51/s ... l/44-63864 and https://www.mustangsmustangs.com/p-51/s ... l/44-12016 which does not appear to have much of a history before 2007, but was 'known' as 44-63864 back then.

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