Warbird Information Exchange

ADDENDUM AFTER 1st Published-
This is NOT current official CAF viewpoint, opinion or Point of View!
We all love our Endangered Species, the planet and Apple Pie

Thanks to Col. John "b29fltengr" for sending me a sheaf of papers related to the original purchase of the first CAF B17.

Col. Lefty Gardner - Staff Procurement Officer-CAF - composed a five page report urging the CAF to buy what became TEXAS RAIDERS.

It didn't take much urging for Col. L. P. Nolen - Deputy Commander to get behind the drive. (Col. Jethro E. Culpepper was commander, in case you are confused at the "Deputy" in Col. Nolen's honorific.)

And our quote of the day...

"During World War II we produced 12,677 B-17s. Yet today we have more whooping cranes in this country than we do B-17s."
Gen. T.P. Gerrity, USAF
Deputy Chief of Staff
(At CAF Museum Dedication January 1966)


SPANNER AKA
Don Price- Wing Leader
Commemorative Air Force
Gulf Coast Wing

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The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

I'm sure some EcoNazi somewhere would be highly offended by that statement and that they'd certainly use it as a reason to ground all B-17s forever since they're obviously of less value than an endangered species...

Oh the days when people actually got it. Hopefully they'll return some day.

Amen CAPFlyer....Amen

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I think Lefty's point was about how rare B-17s were, not their relative importance compared to the whooping crane.

As for which is more important, I can't believe any intelligent person would consider a type of airplane more important to preserve than a species of living beings, but then, I've seen lots of things I can't believe. It's only an argument for grounding B-17s if the B-17s are actually being used to kill the cranes, which I don't even think an EcoNazi (a species, by the way, that never existed) would suggest!

August

hmmmm...

Maybe we could preserve both instead of it ALWAYS being ONE OR THE OTHER.

More species have been driven to extinction than currently are known to exist. And MOST of them before Modern Man was mucking up the mire!
(I heard that on PBS and so it must be true )

And yet somehow we struggle on.

If I had to choose between an intact Devastator or a B17A or even a Buffalo Brewster over a Sabre Tooth Tiger or a wooly mammoth...

hmmmmmm

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

That is easy to solve, shoot the animal to wound it and keep it from moving around, recover the plane, then bring a vet to fix up the critter.

What just about everyone here is missing, and by a very wide margin, is the time frame when the proposal to find and restore TEXAS RAIDERS was written in.
That was a time when everyone had a lot fewer knots in their respective thongs and subtle, double intendre humor was appreciated, not examined from 571 different angles and perspectives by every tiny minded BOZO with a hatchet to grind!

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

We aren't missing it. It just isn't true, that's all.

August

[quote="SPANNERmkV"]

And our quote of the day...

"During World War II we produced 12,677 B-17s. Yet today we have more whooping cranes in this country than we do B-17s."
Gen. T.P. Gerrity, USAF
Deputy Chief of Staff
(At CAF Museum Dedication January 1966)

Just to clarify who said what, notice that it wasn't Lefty Gardner who originally made the whooping crane analogy, but Gen. T.P. Gerrity. And I don't believe the General was advocating killing whooping cranes to save an aircraft.

Matt, good one!
CAPFlyer, don't count on it anytime soon.

I cannot win for losing on this one SOOOOOOO IF:

A. The Global Warming believers are correct the Whoopers will be cooling their tootsies on the beach at the Gulf of Mexico in Wisconson

B. The Neo-Mini-Ice Agers are calling it correctly the whoopers will be perturbed by popsicles on their paws beside the Panama Canal

I can only imagine Lefty or Loyd saying something to the effect, "I don't know WHY people are so concerned about the whooping cranes... Spotted Owls make MUCH better eating!"

SPANNER the De-Sensitivity Trainer
Soon to be living in a van down by the river!

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

Given the era that it is attributed to, I think the quote rules.