kalamazookid wrote:
As far as this P-51 story goes, I would think that there would have been some sort of record somewhere that would be able to confirm it. There's gotta be some sort of paperwork that would involve a P-51 transferring from military to civilian ownership, no? Even if it was trucked or moved in some other way. It would be really cool if the story was true, but it seems to me there would have at least been some sort of evidence that it still existed before now.
Yes, and there are dozens of "dead end" civil ownership records, so that's just not a feasible means of identification without further information.
So many US civil Mustangs have been covertly bought and sold (for example, for illegal export to South American countries and Israel during the 50s/60s), so many have crashed and had their identity transferred/re-used, so many were bought and 'eaten' by the Cavalier machine...the individual ownership histories of many civil-registered P-51s, especially those prior to the 1980s, are tangled messes. The official FAA records aren't exactly a roadmap, either. I know that there are a half dozen 'historians' who research and track Mustang histories, and even with people who have been researching
a long time, and
via many avenues, it's still not possible to have a 100% tie-up of the exact history of every single airframe. Trust me, if it were simply "that easy", I know of at least two or three people who would have all ready done that by now.
Remember, Mustangs weren't always considered the carefully-treated artifacts that they are today. In researching for my Cavalier book, I had one pilot tell me that during the 50s and 60s, P-51s "cost less per pound than a good steak". They were bought, sold, scrapped, parts swapped, IDs swapped, dismantled, rebuilt, all the time with little care given toward that airframe's provenance. Plus, the military didn't really care that much -- these airplanes were scrap, and they weren't really that interested in tracking exactly what aifrframe went to whom. Sometimes the airplanes were sold by the pound as scrap...they were simply metal that was in the shape of an airplane.
Go take a look at any of the published lists of P-51s, including the WIX Registry, and you'll find numerous Mustangs who have entries that end with unknown whereabouts or question marks. There are MANY of them. Even today, with how closely we in the warbird world track the whereabouts of individual airframes, new stuff pops up from time to time that has been squirreled away in a hangar or rebuilder's shop (something, for example, like the TF-51 project that Square One was building for Nathan Davis).
If, as the poster on AAFO has indicated, this particular aircraft was parked in the 1970s or earlier, it's entirely possible that it is true and simply slipped away unnoticed at a time when Mustangs weren't so limited in number and not so many people were tracking their every move and reporting it on the internet.
_________________
ellice_island_kid wrote:
I am only in my 20s but someday I will fly it at airshows. I am getting rich really fast writing software and so I can afford to do really stupid things like put all my money into warbirds.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
