Warbird Information Exchange

http://www.commemorativeairforce.org/?p ... ventID=218

Like it or not, it's going to happen now.

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Brad

Well there you go CAFers. Your vote is complete, now what do you do? Do you take a path of cynicism or a path of hope.

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“Knowing what’s right, doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”

Sad.

I wish the organization well in their future. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here, but the first time I ever heard about a "warbird" movement was reading an article in "Boy's Life" (the scouting magazine) when I was a kid. I had already read Martin Caidin's book about the B-17 and reading about one flying with one wheel down getting attacked by a Zero at Harlingen was pretty thrilling. It certainly started my quest. And now I own 5 warbirds, 14 WWII Vehicles, and warehouses full of WWII stuff. It's all the CAF's fault. Or "Boy's LIfe" did it. You decide.

I have come a long way, past a lot of volunteer, 501C3, museum, enthusiast organizations since then. The one thing I can say about all of them is that the one constant is the never-ending struggle to be feasible and practical. This is not the first time I have seen an organization like this one make a change like this one, with and without member support. Any move like this is a crapshoot- there is nothing guaranteed. Just because other organizations have made moves that were unsuccessful doesn't mean this one is going to be unsuccessful; only time will tell.

I will say this, and it is not directed at any one in particular. It is fight or flight time. If you did/didn't support the move, it is time to re-assess your participation, say thanks or goodbye or re-up your membership or whatever is appropriate, and help/let be the organization to make it or not make it. Standing outside the circle criticizing is not going to help one bit, and may harm. If it was the wrong move, you'll know in a few years. And then you can say I told you so and help pick up the pieces from the bankruptcy, insolvency, or court-ordered auction and run it the way you like. If it is the right move, I hope people can admit they were wrong and move forward positively. Again, I'm not saying this to anybody in particular- I've just been in spots like this in MANY, MANY organizations like this and it comes from experience.

It is definitely the time for the leadership to come out and be positive. A strong effort should be made to engage and be empathetic with the dissenters. A very strong, forward looking, simple message should be issued to try to bind up the group. That is a critical role to take at this juncture. Again from experience, it is the exceptional leader who is able to do this smoothly. This is also not a commentary on anybody in particular- again just from experience.

I just hope that due diligence was done by the proper people and that it winds up successful for the whole organization. I make no predictions and have no dog in this hunt- I only like to see warbirds preserved in flight status. Good luck to the CAF.

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REMEMBER THE SERGEANT PILOTS!

I've seen the CAF slowly dying in Midland since it is in such of an out-of-the-way place. Have all you whiners ever tried to get a room out there to stay at a reasonable rate? The airshows are lucky to get 20,000 attendees, hardly enough to pay for an expensive airshow.

The HQ is the only part moving out of Midland, the museum is staying, and Midland will still have an airshow.

The High Sky Wing will survive.

ITS ABOUT THE AIRPLANES! Get over your hurt feelings. If you can't handle to move, go ahead and quit the CAF. I've seen many members come and go in my 37 years in the CAF and none of them were indispensable, there are many people that can take your place. The CAF cannot survive as a "good old boys flying club".

A true CAF member would step up to the plate and say "What can I do to help?"

You are RIGHT it is ABOUT the AIRPLANES! It is too bad Steve Brown really doesn't feel that way as well. After all, he sold thousands of dollars worth of parts out of he Parts depot for pennies. He's sold other aircraft without regard to what to took collect them. And of course, has tarnished the image of the CAF to the point of irritating our benefactors.

Maybe you should pull yourself out of the cockpit and get your hands dirty doing the "hard work of the CAF" to include fundraising, collections and doing the maintenance required to keep an airplane in the air. I have.

Don't lecture me about it being a "good ol' boys" flying club. I am a girl and I too have nearly 30 years In the CAF. Oh, and not all of us have a b29/24 to fly.

Don't get me mad.

I agree. I lived in Abilene for 7 years...and Midland was even more out of the way. I only went there when driving to AZ or CA...or catching a plane.
It's 6 hours by car from DFW....a looong way from anywhere. And a long way from Abilene which most people consider "the middle of nowhere."

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.
Note political free signature.
I figure if you wanted my opinion on items unrelated to this forum, you'd ask for it.

Jackie, I assure you that he has done all that and more over the years. For more airplanes and wings than just the B-29 and B-24. All of us in the CAF, male and female, rich and poor, do have the B-29 and B-24 to fly. All it takes is the sacrifice of some time and a strong enough desire to do it. I'm a nobody and got to do it.

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Brad

Brad, when's my checkout?!

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Taylor Stevenson

Call the squadron, ground school is coming up!

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Brad

I apologize. Just struck a nerve with me with the implication that i haven't nor do I contribute to the CAF. And the moniker that he uses as the B29/B24 flight engineer tells me that a lot of people work awfully darn hard so that he has the privilege to fly.

Honestly, I want what is best for the CAF. But this "shut up, the vote is over" doesn't sit well with me.

If this vote had been more decisive, i could probably accept its outcome a little better.

But it isn't.

I have a very difficult time accepting an expensive move based on 2-3 votes.

I witnessed first hand the hit the CAF took during the Harlingen to Midland move. It was horrific. We had a membership rollercoaster that took years to recover from.

We keep hearing that more people will go to Dallas/McKinney/etc.

Tell me - why would there be a need to visit these new sites if "it's only the offices" of the CAF?

I realize there will be a new "Airbase." But to me this effort will dillute the significance of the annual Airshow and it appears that the importance of the museum will also become an afterthought.

To me (at least) that is a tragedy.

Witnessing what I am seeing in the CAF cuts deep.

The CAF General Staff now has the ultimate authority to proceed with a move.

But if I were them, I might be reconsidering all of this and try to repair the damage to the organization (and most of all its membership) despite the vote.

That's my point. He's one of the guys that has worked hard over the years to get the airplanes in the air. You act like he lets everybody else do the work and just shows up to fly. That's not the case and not even close to being true. I know this because I've swung wrenches with him in the past. All of our flight engineers are mechanics first. He does far more than just show up and get in the airplane. So do I and so do 99% of the B-29/B-24 squadron.

I agree with you that it was a very close vote. It's hard to swallow defeat but it is over. Nothing is going to keep a move from happening. But I'm curious how many votes do you need in favor of the move before it's okay with you? I don't know this for sure but I have a strong suspicion that the people that wanted HQ to stay in Midland and voted that way are locals or close to it. I keep hearing from people that say that they can't find a single person who actually will admit for voting for the move and they are surprised it passed. Kind of like trying to find people that will still admit they voted for Obama. I have a lot of friends in Midland and a lot of them didn't want the move. But I was surprised to find that so many of them did.

I think this simply boiled down to the fact that most members of the CAF honestly do not care where HQ is located. All HQ is to them is a place to send their $200 a year and as long as they get their dispatch magazine and get to do things with their own unit, headquarters is nothing to them. The sales pitch for the move was a pretty good one and there just isn't much that Midland can or will offer to counter. I will say that I don't think there was much of an attempt for the staff to show the benefits of staying in Midland but I don't think it would have changed the end result and none of the staff are interested in staying there anyhow.

The results of this, just as it seems to be in American politics, shows me that most of the members of the CAF that are eligible to vote didn't care enough about the situation to mail back their ballots or vote at the meeting. I know for certain that there were more than 40 locals in the meeting at Airsho but for some reason only 40 people in that room voted against the move. At that same meeting 84 votes were cast for it. 1,458 absentee votes were for the move and 471 were against it. Just going by those numbers alone, over half the people that bothered to vote wanted the move.

For what its worth, I don't see the museum staying in Midland for very long after the move. I just don't think it is financially possible. About 8,200 people a year go through there and that isn't enough money to pay the light bill. If our state representative Tom Craddick does pull the funding ($375K a year I think?) like he has threatened to do, then there is no way the museum will last. It can't! The thing I truly, truly don't understand is why anybody that really wants the museum to be successful and really supports the goals of CAF in regards to that museum is against the opportunity for it to be in a location that will have a much better shot at bringing people through the doors in the numbers they need to survive. If Midland/Odessa really wants to keep the museum and a CAF presence then this is where they can prove it. Lots of money is in those two towns and surrounding area. I wonder how much of it will start flowing in to save everything? I'd be very surprised if its very much. I say this because the B-29 is sitting in Addison because somebody over there was willing to give us the money to put engines on her. We tried for years and as much money as there is in Midland, nobody would pony up the dough.

I feel bad for the employees at the CAF that are going to be out of jobs. Many of them are my good friends and I hate that the place they love isn't going to be there. I feel bad for my many friends at the High Sky Wing for being saddled with so much of the fallout from this. I think they will survive and continue to grow because that's what they do. I just hope the CAF proper doesn't end up dropping a lot of stuff on them that they can't afford to pay for. I do feel sorry for the people of West Texas that wanted so badly for the CAF to move to Midland and did their best to make it possible. I was born and raised near there and still consider that part of the world my home. But more than anything I feel bad for the people that secretly hope the entire organization fails just so they can say "I told you so." There's a bunch of them and I can't believe they would wish that on an organization they claim to love and support.

The CAF we have today is a very different animal than it was ten years ago. To me it pretty much changed when the PBY lawsuit was lost. That changed the way a lot of stuff was done, financially speaking, and I don't think we ever really recovered from that. Some things will never be recaptured by the CAF, no matter if its in Midland, Dallas, Houston or wherever. But these things are especially missing in Midland. We just don't have the numbers of retirees that can and will work on these airplanes. We don't have the "Winter Texans" that come down south to escape the cold weather and spend their time working on CAF stuff. We don't have the BOQ like we did in Harlingen so people can have a dirt cheap place to do no more than sleep while they are out doing the CAF thing. We don't have the Officer's club that is open all the time so that volunteers can just hang out and socialize after they're done working. We don't have the tourist stuff for the wives and children to do while the Husband/Dad is working on airplanes during the family vacation. We don't have the ex airline and ex military mechanics that cut their teeth on sheet metal, round engines and props. While we no doubt have people with those skills, we don't have them in nearly the numbers we used to have them and we have fewer that can or will do it on a volunteer basis. With respect to that situation, I fear the horse is long gone from the barn. As far as the other things I listed, I don't know that moving somewhere else will fix them but there is certainly a better chance of it happening in a bigger city.

For the record, I voted for the move and still support it. I also hope the museum moves eventually as well but only because I think it will be better in the long run. Something has to be done to keep this organization alive and leaving it in Midland wasn't doing it. I'll go where ever the CAF is as long as I support what they are doing. They day I can no longer support what they do I will walk off.

At the end of it all there just wasn't enough members of the CAF that thought it was worth keeping this move from happening.

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Brad

I spent years going to Harlingen and loved every minute of it down there. Sleeping in the BOQ in the hangar was a treat in both summer and winter times. Good old Cowboy riding the fence too! I didn't like the move to Midland but that was a deal here we are/were!

So quit bitchin' and keep moving forwards.

In the HRL days it was a journey and a half [and expensive] to travel to and fro from Down Under. My reward to to meet a great bunch of folks, work on and help preserve great aircraft. In addition raise some real $$$$ for the "Colonel" and best of all have fun..[forgot to mention being checked out on the B-17/T-6/B-25/PBY and riding in many others was my other reward]

I have a hard time keeping silent. Brad's comments are very thoughtful and I would say are generally correct. "ME108's" are indicative of her long-time support and passionate feelings about the CAF. I sympathize...As for me, I'm simply tired. There have been so many misstatemtents of fact, so many failures (on both sides) to understand once again what the CAF is, how it is organized, so many examples of arrogance (again, on both sides)......it has been difficult to support either view.

As I have said, the move to Midland in 1991 WAS NOT because Midland was a tourist stop. Instead, it moved because it couldn't stay in Harlingen, it was virtually without funds, and Midland offered a place and significant money. There was no accredited museum attached to the CAF's move to Midland. That museum, supported largely by local money, grew up here. The heartburn people in this local area have about the move is largely because they did put millions of dollars into the facility. I've tried to point out to those very people that without their continued support the CAF in Midland will indeed fail, and then we can start a new round of finger-pointing. (note to Brad: foundations, politicians, and well-healed individuals here will not give money to an airplane, but they will give to a brick and mortar facility: hence we built the CommCtr but could not raise money to re-engine the B29. The reasons why have lots to do with preceived liabilities, lawyers and events like the PBY and B26 crash).

The failure to attract large numbers of visitors is, apparently, behind the current General Staff's desire to move to a different locale. (I will not attribute this move to Steve Brown's desire to live somewhere else, although others make a compelling argument). I will say this: building a duplicate of the museum somewhere else, even in the heart of the metroplex, will not bring thousands of people through the door and assure self-sufficiency. If Kermit Weeks is re-thinking his facility, because it doesn't draw the expected numbers of visitors, then I believe it is clear that aviation museums are never going to be self-sufficient, and this includes the Air and Space Museum. And, without a jet demo team, Airsho in McKinney will not draw, as a percentage of the area population, any more folks than Airsho here.

Nor is there a compelling argument that Midland is "too poor" to support a facility like the CAF. The most recent US Bureau of Economic Activity statistics put Midland as having the highest per capita income IN THE NATION ($83,049 for those like Mr.O who like numbers to support their cases), and the lowest unemployment rate is the lowest IN THE NATION (3.1%). Apparently, from some of the snarky comments I've read, a better case for the move can be made that there is only one decent restuarant here, so why not move?

I wish the General Staff had been more thoughtful and looked more closely at the ramifications of Steve Brown's recent column in Dispatch about CAF airplanes and touring them. Steve shows great insight here. Clearly, as Brad and B29eng can attest, the CAF story is best told to thousands and thousands when the airplanes are on tour. Rather than spend millions building another "fixed base" I would have advocated spending money to enable more airplanes to tour. My good friend Doug R came up with the perfect prototype of what should be done with all the CAF aircraft with his "Redtail Project." Of course, the cynic would point out that the money to move is supposed to be coming from the locations who have made bids and not from the CAF itself: ergo there is no money within the CAF to promote/enable more units to tour their airplanes. I then wonder exactly what these locations think they are getting from the CAF? I would imagine that the CAF Foundation (and I'm still a member of that board) will be asked to provide "matching funds" for some part of this move...

The mission of the CAF is education: in my opinion a "fixed base" is not the best way to achieve that. The CAF CEO and the General Staff have made a commitment to maintain the current "fixed base" in Midland, and now they have the flexibility to come up with more innovative ways to fulfill the CAF mission with a Headquarters somewhere else. No one wants to hear the opinions of former Presidents, governors, mayors, or old Chiefs of Staff. I wish the current leadership the best in this new endeavor.

ME108 Taifun, how about joining the B-29/B-24 Squadron and join us on tour. We work hard and have a lot of fun on tour. In my opinion, we do a better job of education of the public on tour than at an airshow.

The days of Harlingen are long gone and Midland never recaptured it. Will we ever see days like that again? I think not. Lets move forward.