Skyline said:National Heratage
At the rate these things are getting stacked up it will only be a short time before they are all gone. I have never seen a Hellcat in person. It would a sad sad day if we were down to one. I have never seen an avenger either. Two years or so ago two guys crashed a one of a kind Hinkel in WY. Usually the pilots are low time millionaires who can afford more plane than they can Handel. To me it would be like burning down historical buildings because we wanted to see how the old fireplaces worked. I know they can fly. There is plenty of movie footage of that. I also know that they can crash and we are building up a growing inventory of movies of how well rare old planes can burn at airshows. We are past the point of having to save them from the scrap heap now we need to save then from their saviors. I think it would be a crime to let them all be destroyed one at a time. Even though they are privately owned these relics are a national treasure and should be protected like historical buildings.
Skyline
Ah Skyline, you are a piece of work. I really know squat about warbirds but my boss has an active program restoring any number of extremely rare machines, some of which I haven't even heard of before. What would you expect him to think if the goverment came in and said words to the effect, your grounded. None of these aircraft will ever fly again. I think in spite of his keen interest in the history of these aircraft, all future projects would come to a halt overnight and we would all miss out on this part of aviation history. In my bosses case, they restore aircraft to flting condition, not just static display. This is a big and very expensive program and I would say if it were not for the multi-millionaires or billionaires, nothing would be happening today in this field. the dollars are just to big.
As for the pilots who fly these aircraft, at least in the case of his P51, Upupaepops there are only two pilots who have ever flown the airplane other than the production pilot at NA when it was brand new. They are the pilot who flew in active duty (9 German aircraft destroyed) who by the way is still living and very active albeit no longer a pilot and now Steve Hinton, certainly not an amature or rich kid.
It is a tragedy when we lose one of the airplanes due to an accident, but they were losing everyday when they were brand new. Sadly nothing has changed.