JohnB wrote:
Django wrote:
But imagine if the YAF could get it and make her airworthy. Sigh...
I would love to see a Liberator fly from Willow Run.
BUT (
and there is always a but)...
The 24 is
darn near "there aren't many left so they shouldn't be flown", IMHO.
Imagine how we'd feel if it were lost....
We even have more static B-29s than 24s, if I'm not mistaken.
When we get down to a handful of airframes, each one should be protected to the best of our ability...and that means that it shouldn't be left outdoors.
Here here! It should NOT be outside. None of those WWII airframes should be. But I also will have to respectably say NO! There are not enough 24's in the air and it would be a shame to keep the rest on the ground just because of the fear of losing them. With that mindset MAAM should finish up there P-61 and put her inside a climate controlled building permanently. Now tell me you don't want to see that fighter in the air? And there's only 4 of those left! And we already have 2 flyable B-24s. Why wouldn't we want to try and enlarge the population of flying types? If these planes are taken care of properly then the risk of loosing one of them from flying is considerably low in my opinion. While I agree the surviving population of 24s is very low we should try and get a few more airframes back in the air for people to better understand the aircraft in its natural habitat. Kermit Week's for a start, and the second should be this one, returned to her place of inception, to grace the skies alongside the B-25 and B-17 of YAM's.
Taking a more radical unlikely approach we should be trying to reproduce whole Liberator airframes. Were already seeing a few B-17 projects being built from mostly nothing, so why not the B-24?
Let the Barksdale B-24 go to YAM to get restored to fly!!!!!!!!