How Many Are Around?

A2C · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 1:22 am

Folks

:

Did a search on the faa.gov website and counted around 490 T-28's and 480 T-6's almost the same number. Interesting how so many T's have survived yet so few P's.

Interesting that the quantities extant of T-6's to T-28 are nearly the same.

Any brilliant Wixers who can explain the numbers?

warbirdcrew · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 2:47 am

What, pray tell, is a P?

Rod Schneider · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:42 am

warbirdcrew wrote:

What, pray tell, is a P?

I'll go out on a limb here and assume he means "P" as in "P"-47, "P"-38, "P"-51, etc. etc.

Randy Haskin · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:12 am

Seems relatively obvious that the number of surviving warbird aircraft of a particular type is closely proportional to the cost of owning and operating.

skymstr02 · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:23 am

And that very few trainers were positioned overseas.

After the war, the Reconstruction Finance Corp sold the aircraft off at bargain basement prices, but no one really cared for a single seat fighter that guzzled gas and had no real purpose in the civillian world. PT-13/17's, Bt-13's and AT-6's/SNJ's, could be used for flight training, crop dusting, etc.

P-47's, -51's, and the like were too expensive to be everyones toys.

Dudley Henriques · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:31 am

Randy Haskin wrote:

Seems relatively obvious that the number of surviving warbird aircraft of a particular type is closely proportional to the cost of owning and operating.

So true.

At show sites, every once in a while some fan would point to the fuel caps on the Mustang and ask, "What goes in there ?"
Answer was always the same. I'd smile and say,
"That's where the money goes" :-)

DH

Robbie Roberts · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 8:19 am

I'd venture a guess the main reason there are so many more trainers than fighters is that Fighters come and go- what one day is top of the line may be at any moment outmoded and outclassed by the next model- such as the Zero and the F6F Hellcat: One day the Zero w the hottest thing going, the next, the Hellcat had come along, and outclassed it....So, at the end of the war they had hundreds of thousands of front line fighters, pursuits, bombers, etc. which were stripped and destroyed because jet fighters and newer bombers were outclassing them, and the older ones- P-38, 40, 51, etc. were now no longer cutting edge.

With trainers, the changes are more gradual- a simple airframe design can go without great modification for a long time- the basics never change, so continued use is no problem. The basic trainer, AT-6, etc, were still a viable training aircraft, so there was no need to scrap them for newer designs until the airframes had reached a reasonable age. Also, trainers could be more readily moved to the civilian market than warbirds.

The old fighting warbirds were going for pennies on the dollar after the war- and thus so much scrapping took place, yet the trainers were still in use- even into the 1950s as USAF & USN trainers, and with the CAP into the 1960s, so not nearly as many were destroyed.

Makes sense to me...

Robbie

Lynn Allen · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:33 am

To add to the numbers of what if, the numbers of many P-38's, P-51's were smashed in pits and Corsairs and Hellcats pushed off the flight deck???

Lynn

Stoney · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:55 am

NATA has 480 T-6s and 164 T-28s in our active membership. I'm sure there are more of these that are not members.

Holedigger · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 11:14 am

...and golf clubs don't fit!

Airplanejunkie · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:26 pm

Randy Haskin wrote:

Seems relatively obvious that the number of surviving warbird aircraft of a particular type is closely proportional to the cost of owning and operating.

I wouldn't rule out the 2 seat/dual control aspect, either.

Dudley Henriques · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:05 pm

Holedigger wrote:

...and golf clubs don't fit!

Pretty good sign there :-)

)

Reminds me of our pitot cover. :-)

) I recommended this to Bill Ross as well after I chased a kid who was trying to swing the rudder trim tab on his Mk16 Spit one day down at Dulles.
After seeing several kids grabbing the pitot head on our airplane and trying to swing on it when we had it parked as a static display one afternoon at Andrews, I had my wife sew us a special P51D pitot cover. It was solid red with a yellow lightning bolt embroidered on each side of the tail that hung down from the head. Inside the lightning bolts was embrodered in large black letters, "DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE"

Worked like a charm. Never saw a kid near that pitot head again :-)

)

JBoyle · **Posted:** Sun Oct 18, 2009 5:29 pm

Remember, just because something is registered with the FAA doesen't mean it exists.

Example ...FAA records show 418 Cessna T-50s/AT-17s/UC-78s.
How many are really flying out there?
20-30?

And authors like Scott Thompson have long mentioned in books and websites about "phantom" warbirds that still are on the books but in fact were scrapped/crashed/exported years ago.

Scott Rose · **Posted:** Mon Oct 19, 2009 11:32 am

Also consider that most fighters are not work horse aircraft. I have seen Hellcats with spray bars but thats fairly unique. Trainers tend to have multiple seats and could serve as hacks and as cheap GA aircraft and tended to be much more economical to operate. Fighters tended to be mainly toys or racers. A lot of warbirds survived because they worked after the war in some capacity.

Just my $.02

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