Warbird Information Exchange

We can all agree with Matt that warbirds survived because they had a "use," but entertainment uses are uses too, and movie appearances and racing should be added to his list, along with photo mapping, cloud seeding, bug spraying, dope smuggling, gate guarding, and the myriad other uses that convinced someone that each individual plane was worth keeping around.

August

I think the CAF is due a little credit in this regard as well as the Warbird Report section of Air Classics for getting people interested.

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Always looking for WW2 Half-Tracks and Parts.

This is 100% correct.

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I think its agreed that no one thing started people thinking about older aircraft. You are not born by proclaiming that your going to be a Warbird enthusiast. Everybody has their moment. My four were three films and a gate guardian. History over the decades has provided aircraft at the wrong time and right time to be collectors items, through films like Dambusters where all the Avro Lancasters were eventually scrapped, to the Battle of Britain where aircraft became collectors items, plus Catch 22s North American B-25s that are still around. The aircraft sitting in a field at Rukuhia in New Zealand that lasted a long time, housed Curtiss P-40s, Grumman Avengers, Lockheed Hudsons and I seem to remember one Supermarine Seafire, plus one Mitsubishi Zero aircraft came at the wrong time and few were saved because money and storage maybe were not available. The people with money were possibly in the Northern Hemisphere and aircraft in remote areas in the Southern Hemisphere, so distance can play a part. Where have you heard the if only you had come two years ago you could have had, etc. Gate guardians around the world, plus museums have saved a lot of aircraft. The water bomber industry with Grumman Tigercats, Avengers and Consolidated Privateers, Catalinas, Lockheed Neptunes, etc. Racing planes like the Vought Corsair, Northern American Mustangs, Hawker Sea Furies. Crashes in remote areas decades ago added more aircraft. Fresh water lakes/fjords another good provider of aircraft. Iraq and South American Air Forces I would think have dried up for old Warbirds now, did provide aircraft. When money appeared two or three aircraft had to be bought to rebuild one. Farms in Canada provided Hawker Hurricanes, Bristol / Fairchild Bolingbrokes, Fairey Swordfish, Westland Lysanders and North American Yales. Original pioneer enthusiasts that collected aircraft were few and far between and have mainly passed away, but their legacy lives on. Commercial enterprises were a source. But manufacturers like Brewster were on the nose and aircraft like the Fairey Barracuda did not have that if it looks right it is right look, so these and others were never contemplated even when available. Planning to save a Warbird by anybody was being at the right place at the right time, with the correct resources and attitude. If we had got together years ago and provided a few hundred dollars/pounds we could have saved aircraft, but no internet and no magazines that today allows access to knowledge and a feeling of togetherness was invented or available.

Did you see post #3?
Both were mentioned.

In short, films may have generated enthusiasm, but with a few major exceptions, the industry did little of the dirty "hands on" work, instead relying on what was already available from the military, contractors or collections/museums.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

That may be your "in short." I wouldn't say there is consensus.

Hollywood came in at a different time point than a lot of the things we are talking about. It is one thing to say that warbirds still had viable commercial uses in 1950. In 1965, the story was different. That is when the warbirds were beginning to wear out and become mostly not the best equipment for any job, because of new civilian types or more recent military sell-offs. Their historical significance had not quite set in, but their practical use had become very limited. That was the moment, from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, when most warbirds might have disappeared.

For example, what was the one moment since 1941 when there was not a single airworthy P-47 in the world? It wouildn't have occurred to me that there was such a moment, until recently when I was leafing through my November 1972 Air Classics, which had a feature on Ed Maloney's P-47G. It was the last flyable P-47 when it overshot the runway at Point Mugu in October 1971. At that point, all the military ones had been retired, the CAF's P-47N had pranged, the razorbacks that would become Little Demon and Big Stud were unrestored, and the six that Jurist had bought from Peru in 1968 were still being worked on. The first of them would fly in early 1972, but for that period of a few months, there were no airworthy P-47s. The flying population of most warbirds reached their low point - often zero - at about that time. It took a cultural change, or at least the emergence of a subculture, in the mid 1970s to ensure that more than a token handful of warbirds would be saved. Hollywood had a great deal to do with that. The impact of Battle of Britain, Tora, Catch-22 and Black Sheep went far beyond the types used in those productions. In the mid 1970s, warbirds became a Cool Thing for a Millionaire to Own. Hollywood had a lot to do with that. If warbirds had not become a CTFMO, sexy enough for a Max Hoffman or Frasca or Whittington or Pond or Weeks or Collings or Lewis or Allen or Lauder to choose them as their outlet for their outsized wealth, there'd be a lot fewer of them now.

August

With the Buchons from Battle of Britain, they'd been used in a few other movies as 109s (and as P-51s in "Patton"!).
I have always wondered if the movies saved them or just made people aware of them who otherwise wouldn't have had a clue?
Either way, I wonder if any of the Spanish WW2 designed airframes survive today directly from their appearance in film?

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)

And in the movie Patton, they used Patton tanks as German tanks....

Phil

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A man's got to know his limitations.

They filmed almost the entire movie in Spain, using what they could get there. I think a Sherman recovery vehicle (in the "relieving Bastogne" segment) is the only actual WW2 tank in the whole movie. The last time I watched it, I wasn't sure I could find a single WW2 Jeep in it, either.

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)