Historical authenticity... is it important to you?

[tom d. friedman]

doc oscardeuce your 02 already has dirty bird status...... you bought it from "dirty ron"!! i feel your thinking approach to the re-painting is right on track too!

[bdk]

Let's be honest here.
Would you rather have something with Jelly Beans on it (s/n 44-72777 a 5 kill aces actual plane for gosh sakes!!!!)

...or some that looks like this?

Uhhhh... Hmmm.... Hard to decide!

[Trey Carroll]

Jack Cook wrote:
Let's be honest here.
Would you rather have something with Jelly Beans on it (s/n 44-72777 a 5 kill aces actual plane for gosh sakes!!!!)

Mmm, jelly beans!

My opinion is leave the decisions to man with the checkbook. That FW-190 looks good and I would have thought it was real. As Hacker would say, skirt caught on your stick??? Let this go.

[planeoldsteve]

I'd rather see an inaccurate scheme flying than an accurate one on the ground.

Randy

Would you rather fly a historically correct plane the way it was back when or say an S-51.

Why stop at paint? An old hotrod guy once said it takes a real man to cut up a classic.I think it takes a bigger man to preserve History.
Instrument panel layout?
BUCHON, http://www.courtesyaircraft.com/images/ ... el_lrg.jpg
GRUMMAN FM-2 WILDCAT http://www.courtesyaircraft.com/images/ ... nl_lrg.jpg
Engine and prop installation?
HAWKER SEA FURY http://www.courtesyaircraft.com/images/ ... mages/51SF%

Starters and electrical sys. on an L4 cub or L16?
Toe brakes,Disk Brakes? An old crop duster pilot once told me that brakes are to hold you for the runup and beyond that they are a crutch for a poor pilot-He has Redline disk brakes on his Stearman!

My point is if you want to experience History the way it was you need to hand prop it or the week brake and the non standard "T" instrument panel.If you are going to show it off regularly or race it you need to upgrade it.

Steve

[Jack Cook]

My point is if you want to experience History the way it was you need to hand prop it or the week brake

Ya souund like ol' JCW. His Stearman, NP-1 & BK Bird have no electrical
ie starter, radio ect. You either prop them or get the crank out (which is fun has h*ll BTW!). Now that I think about it, the tailwheel lock on his Stearman been broke for years it just swivels 360' I guess a locking or stearable tailwheel is a crutch for some too!

[DoraNineFan]

I always liked the civilian paint jobs. Onmark A-26's and Cavalier P-51's I think were nice. Everyone has their own taste. Invasion stripes are on everything. I'm just happy to see them fly and thanks to the owners who keep them going. I would rather see a bad paint job flying then an accurate paint job in a museum.

Steve

I don't have a problem with civil schemes worn on some aircraft, particularly the P-51. I consider it part of the linage for the type. The Cavalier scheme was especially attractive and I would not be surprised to see some future owners paint their Mustangs in civil colors just for a change.

I do think that if someone wishes to represent a paint scheme as authentic, then it would be nice to go the extra mile and try to make it authentic. I don't think this is difficult to do. There are many people on this forum who share a passion for history and for these aircraft and many of them would offer their time and resources to assist in getting a paint scheme as historically accurate as possible. Many would probably do this free of charge (or for a beer or two) just for the chance to participate. There are also a number of accurate artists' renderings that are publically available on the internet.

Having said that, I also feel that that the owner has the final say in the paint colors. It is isn't our place to dictate how it should look, but we can express an opinion about it. For more famous aircraft (genuine combat veterans for example) I can understand how the criticism could be much louder since those examples are a culture resource.

[bdk]

Why stop at paint? An old hotrod guy once said it takes a real man to cut up a classic.I think it takes a bigger man to preserve History.
Instrument panel layout?

I'm not sure a lot of folks want to go bombing around the skies at 300+ MPH with a whiskey compass and a stopwatch for navigation in this day and age. Also hard to use the transponder if you can't see it. I'd rather see a Wildcat that arrived safely than a crashed one with an authentic panel.

[Dan Johnson II]

Maybe the better way to say it, is how would you do it, given the opportunity. Would you spend the extra cash needed to take your warbird of choice all the way back, or put it in fuel etc and fly

My fantasies about owning a warbird always involve taking it all the way back to the way it rolled off the line. For me it would be a history time capsule. I'd want the armor plate in my 51 if I had a Mustang. I'd want the guns installed and pylons for drop tanks, fuselage fuel tank etc. Should I get the chance to show kids around the bird, I'd want to be able to show them what a 20 something pilot was looking at and flying in 44-45.

I remember getting the chance one time at the Minnesota Air Guard Museum to stand on the wing and show off their Mustang to folks. It's a Cavalier bird as I understood it and the cockpit was not stock and not finished much at all, so i was standing there saying 'this is where the gun sight would have been', This is where the oxygen regulator would have been, etc etc.

Not complaining though as I got a chance to hand around on a Mustang for an afternoon

But it's all about the history for me. I don't think it's fair to expect that of someone else on their dime though.

[k5083]

Michel, the original scheme sucked, so we came up with something better.

Hmm ... well if you want to tart your bird up like a 190 it's your business, but you could have gone with:





Instead of putting yourself in the same category with:



August

[Matt Gunsch]

It depends in the plane. The C-119 Hans bought for the museum is better know as The Phoenix, from the movie The Flight of the Phoenix. If we were to paint it as RCAF 130, it would be another C-119 in RCAF markings, so it is better known in its civilian guise.

[bdk]

Michel, the original scheme sucked, so we came up with something better.

Hmm ... well if you want to tart your bird up like a 190 it's your business, but you could have gone with...

So much for the holiday cheer around here! Santa bring you guys a stocking full of coal, or what?

[Randy Haskin]

Would you rather fly a historically correct plane the way it was back when or say an S-51.

My point is if you want to experience History the way it was you need to hand prop it or the week brake and the non standard "T" instrument panel.If you are going to show it off regularly or race it you need to upgrade it.

I think personally I would prefer an airplane with a non-stock cockpit in the name of having better radios and navigation. Sure, I'm a big fan of the wartime stock restorations -- I think they're very cool. However, if I were going to be flying the airplane and showing it off, I'd sacrifice a little authenticity in the name of safety and ease of cockpit workload.

Many times "experiencing history" isn't quite as good in actuality than it is in theory. For example, you couldn't pay me enough to go back in time and actually fly a WWII combat mission in a Mustang. Getting shot at is highly over-rated.

The bottom line for me is that airplanes are meant to fly -- warbirds especially. Just the same way that I wouldn't by a gun and put it in my gun safe and not shoot it, or buy a car and keep it under a cover in the garage. Things like goofy paint schemes or shag-carpet interiors aren't me favorite, but if it's a choice between accuracy and airworthiness, I fall solidly on the side of airworthiness.

[T33driver]

Would you rather fly a historically correct plane the way it was back when or say an S-51.

My point is if you want to experience History the way it was you need to hand prop it or the week brake and the non standard "T" instrument panel.If you are going to show it off regularly or race it you need to upgrade it.

I think personally I would prefer an airplane with a non-stock cockpit in the name of having better radios and navigation. Sure, I'm a big fan of the wartime stock restorations -- I think they're very cool. However, if I were going to be flying the airplane and showing it off, I'd sacrifice a little authenticity in the name of safety and ease of cockpit workload.

Many times "experiencing history" isn't quite as good in actuality than it is in theory. For example, you couldn't pay me enough to go back in time and actually fly a WWII combat mission in a Mustang. Getting shot at is highly over-rated.

The bottom line for me is that airplanes are meant to fly -- warbirds especially. Just the same way that I wouldn't by a gun and put it in my gun safe and not shoot it, or buy a car and keep it under a cover in the garage. Things like goofy paint schemes or shag-carpet interiors aren't me favorite, but if it's a choice between accuracy and airworthiness, I fall solidly on the side of airworthiness.

I'll second all that Hacker! A buddy of mine has some newer avionics in his P-51, including an autopilot--a good call with all the IFR cross-country flying he's done over the years to airshows. He said it'd be a cinch to convert his panel back to a "stock military" configuration, but he prefers the extra safety the newer avionics offer. It's a small compromise to ensure safety of flight in marginal weather conditions especially when one considers the pilot's well being, and the fact that my buddy's P-51D Mustang is one of the few flying today with a USAAF WWII combat record (NL5427V--"Petie 2nd").

[fritzthefox]

Think about this: No matter WHAT paint job your plane is currently wearing, a hundred years from now, some future museum curator will consider it the historically authentic paint scheme. Because it was. At least, it will be. It's just not history yet.

It's all relative.

What color is RLM 75 really? Who really knows? The restorer who scraped paint chips from beneath a fifty year old sun-bleached and rusted hulk? The 70 year old ace with fading memory and shoebox full of yellowing snapshots? The model builder with a pile of books and recent issue FS color swatch book? Did you know that one in ten of them are color blind?

It's all relative.

For every warbird that stands fossilized in a museum, there were probably a thousand examples that flew their entire lives without a single photo to mark their passing. Maybe they were painted out of spec because the crew chief happened to run out of olive drab paint that day. Maybe he mixed his own paints. Maybe someone on the crew was just feeling creative. I have yet to see two airplanes that are exactly the same, even of the same make and model. Each one is its own unique blend of avionics, rigging and repairs. They all get repainted sooner or later.

It's all relative.

History is a chronicle of the comings and goings of people, as remembered by people and told to other people. Even what little we know from photos is meaningless without the context given to it by people. People have bad memories and tend to exaggerate, if not completely lie. The past is a mixture of emotions, fading memories and creative storytelling, and the version we get has been through a hundred tellings by the time it reaches our ears. And only from those voices who survive, amplified by celebrity and muted by time. who can really say how it really was?

History is what you make it.

[Edward Soye]

First things first, Merry Christmas everyone.

Now on to relativity. Fritzthefox, sure your points are fair in that there was great variation out there. However if your argument is carried out to its logical conclusion it faces the same problem as so many post-modern challenges to traditional history (in their extreme form anyways - the direction it seems to me that you're going in). Basically you end up in no-mans land with nothing to hold onto.

So if an owner/museum/whatever wants to do a historically accurate restoration on their airplane (paint scheme, cockpit layout, etc.) then they should still try to abide by the original sources available to them. If they're trying to replicate an original example, then they should try to replicate it with all its idiosyncrasies. If they simply don't have the original sources to fill in a particular detail then it’s reasonable to go with "what was done in another similar example", or what would reasonably have been done. These are ways to draw on the relatively different historical precedents that one can find, without painting yourself in to a corner of "it doesn't matter, because it’s all a matter of perspective".

Edward