Warbird Information Exchange

I was just wondering. Concerning all the aircraft, of all types, sold surplus after the war. Is it presumably possible that some are still hiding out there? For instance, out on some persons farm, an old scrap yard, perhaps an old overgrown airfield or maybe stored in an old building way back in the 50s or so...etc..etc? Were records kept at the surplus and disposal sites of what was sold and who they sold it to? Also does anyone have a guess as to what percentage of aircraft sold are accounted for? Thanks

Shay

I don't have any facts or figures on the number of planes scrapped after the war, but it would certainly be possible to find an old airframe sitting in some farmers barn somewhere. As valuable as warbirds seem to tbe today, I would say that it is extremely rare that anything already known hasn't been looked at for recovery purposes. It would seem other countries like in South America where some warbirds operated in post WWII may yield the great undiscovered find.

I would totally disagree agree, I am sure there are items still be sitting on farms today, totally undiscovered by the Aviation Enthusiast/Warbird Community, having suffered the experience myself.

In 1946 Australia established an Aircraft Disposal Commission after WWII to dispose of all surplus aircraft from the RAAF, and much of its records of "what, where and to whom things were sold" still exist in the government archives.

In @ 1985 I investigated the disposal records of a particular type (the CAC Wackett Trainer) and obtained the names of each purchaser of the surplus aircraft, and then tracked them as far as I could.

Many of these addresses were interstate or at the other end of Australia so I could not personally investigate them.

Some become civil registered aircraft and I tracked those thorugh our Dpt of Civil Aviation records until the registration lapsed and their eventual fate could be determined and in the odd case I found the final owner and some parts remaining.

In regards to those which never entered the civil register and appeared to dissappear when sold from the ADC I was forced to try and locate "someone" based on their name and postal address of 40 years ago (1985 - 1946), and this was a slow and unsuccessful process, of writing to old addresses and waiting for returned mail or replies from new occupants who might shed some light on the situation.




In @1992 after being distracted on family, house, work and night school I returned to my research and tried to find these names again, this time I used the free telephone number enquiry service of the general area to search for the specific name or even matching surnames in the same particular area in hope of decendants who might know of the aircraft, but all without much success.

I did however now discover a matching name to who was listed as having brought some aircraft jointly, unfortunately it was a "silent" number and all I could discover was that it existed (our modern privacy laws wouldnt now allow the directory service to even confirm the silent numbers existance)

I gained access to the electoral roll via the local police station and requested postal details of the address of my target persons name identified by the "silent number".

I wrote to this new address enquiring after the 3 aircraft he had purchased, and was advised all three had been purchased after the war for the "nuts and bolts and steel tube" on the farm and had all been used for various parts over the years.

I was advised the remains of all three aircraft had remained on his farm from 1946 until 3 years ago (1989) when the urban sprawl of Brisbane caused his farm to be subdivided for a housing estate and all three fuselages went to the scrap merchant along with the rest of the farm.

I received some parts in the mail that had survived and realised that had I used the phone listings and Electoral Roll in 1985 I probably would have discovered the 3 aircrafts remains intact and still on the farm.

The farm was located in outer Brisbane which is now one of Australia's warbird fraternity hotspots and I am sure none of that fraternity knew of, nor would have left those fuselages there to be scrapped, without approaching the owner to recover them. His willingness to reply, and search and provide any parts that had survived in the hands of neighbours family and friends suggest he would have happily parted with all three to a good home.

regards

Mark Pilkington

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20th Century - The Age of Manned Flight
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