sandiego89 wrote:
StangStung wrote:
Very interesting, thanks for posting.
I used to be a member and regularly get the Dispatch ages ago. Always enjoyed fleet updates.
Can someone who is current explain to me the proliferation of post-WWII aircraft? L-17, T-28, etc.? It seems a good portion of the fleet is now non-WWII aircraft. How/why did this come to be?
Also, back in the day ('80s) there were a few Buchons, and a Spanish Ju-52. What happened to all the adversaries? I seem to recall some controversy about the Ju-52 sporting a swastika being an issue. Did the CAF finally just throw up their hands and say, "forget it"? Also, did the Swordfish and I-16 go away?
So many questions....thanks for the patience of the WIX braintrust!
You may be overthinking it a bit, I would imagine it is a question of economics, not a deliberate conspiracy. The aviation "entry market" for most civilian operators would naturally be a less costly aircraft. One that be can purchased, fueled, hangered, maintained, insured and trained on by a casual civilian owner is always going to be more prevalent than an increasingly costly and rarer WWII aircraft. You can not compare the "costs" of a Navion between a Buschon or a Swordfish. L-17's, Russian/Chinese trainers and T-28's (although getting more expensive) are easier to obtain and afford. Light liaison types are also popular for this very reason. Sure everyone would want their own a P-51, but fewer can afford it.
Perhaps, though I was not asking about a "deliberate conspiracy." That's not a word I'd bandy about these days. I know that money is the ultimate reason for many changes in the warbird arena over the hears and fully get that it's cheaper to fly and insure say, an L-17 than a P-51. All of that makes total sense. But what I was asking was little more nuanced.
Rather, it appears to me (and I could be totally worng about this) that a deliberate
policy decision was made as to the scope of the CAF. Not a conspiracy, rather a plan, set forth and enacted. Back when I was an associate member (many moons ago) the stated policy was something along the lines of "preserving American history by preserving American aircraft of
WWII." Knowing full well the CAF was more of an "old boys" club at the time and has at least attempted to modernize and become somewhat more professional since (I do not want to get into a debate about all that as it's been done to death elsewhere on the forum) It appears the self-described scope of the CAF has been expanded beyond WWII. Now, if the answer is "the current policy is the public doesn't know the difference between a T-28, which is much cheaper to fly than say, a P-40" then I get that. But while I have heard here that "the WWII planes are expensive to fly" and I get that too, what I haven't heard is "the CAF enacted a policy in 20XX to use post-WWII aircraft to preserve the memory of WWII because (a) post WWII aircraft are cheaper to gas up/insure/maintain than actual WWII aircraft." Or maybe even, "the CAF enacted a policy to memorialized ALL veterans (some? during an expanded time frame from 1939-??) by not flying solely WWII aircraft." That's the idea I was going for.
Same with the foreign aircraft. Was there ever a deliberate policy decision to focus on American aircraft? It may be that you are entirely correct and the answer is "no", it was just natural over time that the various CAF units traded out their foreign aircraft for cheaper to fly/insure/maintain American aircraft. And so over time, the foreign planes just drifted away from the CAF. Becuase many of those aircraft are still preserved and flying under new ownership, it would seem that economics isn't the sole reason for this change. In any case, I wonder if the depletion of Axis aircraft from the CAF was due to economic factors, a deliberate policy change, some combination of both? Looks mainly like it was just natural drift due to economics.
I suppose I would have better posed the question by asking was there a deliberate decision to expand the scope of preserving the memory of WWII by expanding the scope of flight operations to aircraft that were not operated during WWII, and was a deliberate decision made to dispense with foreign aircraft. If so, what were the specific policies (if they exist), and when were they enacted?
Clearly, the discussion of money is informative. No flying with out gas/oil, the prices of which may ultimately make flying WWII aircraft - especially larger ones - economically unfeasible for a volunteer organization. Further, there's definitely on flying without (a) an insured aircraft and (b) an insurable pilot to fly it. No bucks, no Buck Rogers an all that.
Anyhow, an enlightening thread. Thanks to all above who chimed in.
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