WallyB wrote:
The restoration was cosmetic, it still has no wings and will never (oops!) fly again.
It remains outside at the collection at Lancaster Ca.
Just a slight clarification on this: as far as I know there are wings for this aircraft, they were once sitting in the hangar behind the aircraft agaisnt the wall. The wings are just not attached.
Warbird Kid wrote:
WallyB wrote:
The restoration was cosmetic, it still has no wings and will never (oops!) fly again.
It remains outside at the collection at Lancaster Ca.
Why is that so? I'd figure this would be a sought after aircraft due to it being an earlier variant. It would fetch a higher price then a J model, right?
I agree it is unlikely that this bird will fly again. The aircraft has corroded wing attach points and if I recall also the spar. None of which of course are impossible to fix as Aero Trader has built both wing attach points and spar components previously. However, the costs of course of completing this work and manufacturing of the parts (on top of the usual stuff)means that there would be great expense involved in the restoration.
This aircraft is not the best example to restore back to military condition due to all of the executive modifications to the aircraft. The right person would be someone who was interested in the aircraft from the perspective of it's executive history. If someone was goign to dump a ton of money into a military C model the best candidate would be the B-25C 42-32354 in my opinion.
It is probably pretty unlikely we will see a C model fly. Sure, no harm in fantasizing I guess but when it comes down to it someone would have to want a B-25C very badly to take on a project like this and they would have to be ok that the value of the aircraft would likely be around half of the dollars put into it (I estimate it costing $1,000,000 to get it flying and near $2,000,000 to have it back to 100% military condition) when it is completed. There may be a few out there with the money and ambition to do such a thing, but most of them already have B-25s sitting in their hangars.
Ryan