Warbird Information Exchange

Couldn't they sell off the B-17E project and one or two other planes to make enough money to keep the place open?

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

I have heard for years that Paul Allen's sister has no love for the Museum, therefore, it goes.

I've experienced in the workplace as well.
I started work as a teenager with a firm that the guy at the head of it, and whose name the company was called, had built it up from age 16, on his own in the 1920's into a huge worldwide multi-national construction, engineering & property company. He only had a daughter, who became a doctor, so when he died in his early 90's, and still head of the company, it took just 6 years for all the MBA whizz-kids, asset strippers and all the other financial piranha's to dismantle and shutdown a business one person had run for nearly 75 years, and put some 5000 people out of work around globe.

If FHC does indeed get shut down, and everything sold off, it will be a huge shame to Paul Allen's legacy and interest, but sadly, if no one else close to him shared that interest or passion, and he has failed to put enough safeguards in place to have stopped this happening (regardless of Covid19) then there's not much anyone can do about it.
Very sad though.

Another of Paul Allen's operations, the RV Petrel research ship, that has found and documented so many WWII shipwrecks in the Pacific over the past several years, just announced today that they too will be doing no more work for the foreseeable future. Once again COVID-19 is used as the convenient excuse (for what seems to have been inevitable even without the pandemic).

It's always the same debate with the same results that most no one wants to accept. There's a very small group of people who view old military planes as something of importance and value. Nine out of Ten people couldn't care less. Same thing with old cars, although I'm quite sure the old auto enthusiasts are much larger than the old airplane folks.

P Allen had the same "bug" that most of us WIXers have. Difference being Allen dedicate far more effort and resources to his passion than we can. He was extremely rare and did things to document and preserve WWII history that we may never see again. Yes there's other "big players" out there still, but no one privately and individually has done more than P Allen IMO. His collection privately owned is second to none IMO and it's extremely sad to hear that the collection most likely seems destined for a breakup. I hope we are all wrong. I hope something changes and the collection stays intact and well preserved. There's too many extremely rare and exceptionally restored aircraft in his collection to break up. Again this is all my wishes, but I have no say in the matter.

I wonder what will become of the known and unknown aircraft that are close to being ready for flight or relatively soon to be completed i.e. 262 & Stuka. Heartbreaking to imagine what the future entails other than what sounds like the obvious.

There's just not enough interest, resources or movement from the "masses" to gather together a proposal to save the collection from the Vulcan Group or immediate family.

Nothing lasts forever but still very heartbreaking.

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45+47=Psalm 92:6

If FHCAM is indeed headed toward dissolution, one last "tip of the hat" to Mr. Allen would be to donate his collection to a flying museum like POF, for instance. One that has the capabilities not only to maintain, and fly, his airworthy aircraft, but to also finish the ones that are very near to being in the air again.

If this did happen (I'm getting way ahead of myself), the beneficiary could sell some of the aircraft they may already have in their collection, to fund the restoration of a more rarer type(s).

Just some thoughts.

I at least hope that the 2020 budget is honored to allow them to fully complete the Me-262 and the Stuka and enjoy a few flights. They have a lot invested in the Stuka with the Hungarian expert team to complete it.

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"They done it, they done it, damned if they ain't flew." December 17, 1903

Do we have any concrete evidence this is happening or is this just all message board speculation?

Speculation and Guessing. They could be just shutting down while this pandemic passes, while they re-asses their projects or they are totally going south.

Nobody will know until they officially announce something.

And honestly, who could possibly afford these birds, or their completion, during these crazy times.

I'd like to politely dispute one of the assertion made above; that "9 out of 10" people don't care about old airplanes.
I'm a volunteer docent at a flying museum.
I think if you present the airplanes properly and tell the human side of their story, almost everyone can relate to the aircraft in some ways.
Okay, they may not go to Oshkosh or pay $3500 for a ride in a Mustang, but many are willing to spend $10 for a couple of hours at a museum (hooefully) listening to a story about how an airframe touched people or made history.

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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.

You’d be fortunate to get one out every ten people to spend $10 to take a lap around an air museum. If it were Disneyland you’d probably get 5 out of ten.

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45+47=Psalm 92:6

While we are on the subject, I do have some simple statics based on my Church group. Every year for the last 3 years we have a men's retreat in Camarillo, CA where on average 75 guys show up. I set up a private tour of the CAF museum. We get 13 people on average to sign up. Most know nothing about airplanes. I do have a few repeat (offenders)LOL, so make the new people showing as 10. That percentage is well over 10% based on the 75 people per year. I always concentrate on the people aspect of the planes as performance talks go in one ear and out the other. It helps that the CAF group fires up and flies a plane or two while we are there, but the majority love to hear about the pilots and designers.

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Better is the enemy of Good.

JohnB wrote [minor edits]:

I am a (college-level) teacher, and can lend more to Mark's comment, which was from the financial perspective of how-to-spend-$10; I am afraid there is another angle to this as well. Below the age of thirty or so, maybe only 1-in-10 of Mark's 1-in-10 has inclination to visit a museum of any kind. The younger generations have much less interest in history in general. I have found that various history-oriented routines that I used to do in class no longer work. Not a single student in a class of thirty can name a Civil War general. Many assume we fought the Russians in WWII (I am not joking on this!). JohnB is talking to an audience that has some interest, but a majority do not and with time the interest, and museum attendance, will likely diminish.

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Kevin McCartney

Sheez.......

Although probably not much different to many under the age of 30-35 here in the UK (apart from your last comment in bold) but you only have to see what's going on here in the UK with the current defacing of many of our war memorials and statues by the current brainless moronic scum protesters, who barely share a brain cell between them.