Avnut wrote:
This makes me mad. There are museums that would love to have these in their collection, the only reason none were claimed any is the museums being told if you want them come get them on your dime, we the Air Force will not help in transporting them to you. We spend around $500 billion a year on defense and no money can be allocated in helping approved museums to preserve this history! Once these aircraft are cut up, they are GONE FOREVER. We are no longer producing a wide variety of different aircraft types, as a result in the future there will be fewer unique types to see in museums. Everyone and their mother will have an F-35 in their collection, but what about a YA-7F. There were 2 YC-15s built with one sitting on Celebrity Row for several years at AMARC within towing distance to Pima. It was scrapped, with no effort being made to transfer it.
Looking over the auction list, an F-105F not converted to a Wild Weasel, only 71 F-105Bs were built, only 50 C-133s built. How many C-97s are preserved, or B-66s, or even HU-16s?
I am sure we all agree that the ultimate stupid award for not preserving history goes to the Navy regarding the "Enterprise" CV-6. Dumb (insert color metaphor of your choosing).
The continual debate: save them all, or concentrate on those that can be reasonably saved? As much as we all like war birds, I do understand that "we cant' save them all", and it does beg the question how many do we need? I love the C-133 and am most sad about that one likely getting scrapped, but is the current survivor list sufficient? Should we spend lots of tax money on "another" C-133 when the "best" survivor is a few hours up the road in Dayton? Was any museum really wanting it given the costs? The C-133 move to the Dover museum did get some support from the USAF with C-5 "training" flights to move it, but was a huge and well planned undertaking. In my view F-105's, C-133, KC-97 and HU-16s are reasonably well represented in collections. The B-66 perhaps not as much, but this example had some issues.
Now for sole survivors, or ultra rare survivors, I'm all for maximum effort. Remind me again why the Savage continues to rot on the Pensacola ramp?
As you brought us ships, the costs and questions are even more staggering. I do agree that the Enterprise would have been a good choice for preservation, but we have multiple battleships, aircraft carriers and submarines from WWII on display. Many are in museums barely getting by, and some will likely face a very tough decision in the decade or so ahead.