Warbird Information Exchange

In my experience, the great majority of Mustangs out there consist of significantly original components.

Anyone know different?

Anyone know who these two fellas are?

All I know is from reading magazines and visiting a well known restoration shop or two.
Yes, some are very original...but even the best of them may of had a ground loop or two in their past.
Then there are the ships which have had major, sometimes fatal accidents...yes, it may be an original airplane but it's on its second fuselage and third set of wings.
Then there are the a.c. recently found and "restored". I'm thinking of one particular aircraft now flying in the UK...it's a combat veteran.
Trouble is, it was shot down or forced landed on a French beach where it was buried for 50+ years. You can't tell me that much of t g e original 1944 metal is in that aircraft.
Same goes for Spitfires only many of them have been realigned due to corrosion from rivets acting against the aluminum.

Now I'm not anti-warbird.
And I'm not a rivet counter...but I am a realist and don't expect the artifact I'm looking at to have the same metal that Rosie riveted on at North American back in the day.

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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.
Note political free signature.
I figure if you wanted my opinion on items unrelated to this forum, you'd ask for it.

I'm only suggesting that most Mustangs haven't been "built from plans" but consist primarily of military sourced components. A groundloop doesn't result in a majority of the airframe being replaced.

And I agree that many Mustangs have been reskinned for appearance reasons, not out of structural necessity.

So how many "dataplate restoration" Mustangs are out there?

Of course that all depends on how much original NAA-produced material was used within the project that one judges to be "enough" to sway the difference between a restoration and a dataplate-rebuild/reproduction/new-build, etc. I lean more in the direction too that there really haven't been that many "dataplate" Mustangs, outside of say the B/C's (i.e., my definition of dataplate rebuilds being the examples that exist today that didn't exist as a complete aircraft outside of paperwork or metal buried in the ground prior to the start of the project - generally the ones where their history suddenly stops in the 40's/50's and suddenly picks up again in the 90's/2000's, etc.).

As for the whole "replica" thing. I've never thought that the term "replica" is accurate for a newbuild/reproduced warbird that is accurate/the exact same as an original (if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, yada yada yada). The term replica, in the sense of warbirds, to me, refers to any one of the scaled-down Mustangs/Spitfires, etc., or the Flugwerk Fw-190's, which in a good number of ways are a departure from the originals, and are only in a general sense an "image" of an original airplane. Some guys, on the Key forum in particular, I think like to use the term "replica" to describe "dataplate restorations" or "newbuilds", only because they know the term can be/is regarded as something of "less than" - such as calling the Mk.1's like P9374 and N3200 "replicas", while in another sentence also referring to the Jurca Spitfires and Spitfire 26's as also being "replicas" - as if they were all somehow equal to that term. The irony is that these same Spitfires, P9374 and N3200 in particular, are among/at the top of the most accurate/authentic/true to the originals of any Spitfires flying.

It seems to me it's up to the buyer to decide what it is they are buying and if the price is appropriate for what they are ctually getting. In this day of internet knowledge and exorbitant warbird fighter prices, it's on the buyer to discover and make their own decision.

I don't consider "dataplate" restorations replicas. I don't know how many are out there, but as I mentioned, there are some...probably more on the Spitfire world than Mustangs.
Neither does the FAA or CAA....a key point.

They are what they are.

My point in my earlier post mentioning ground loops and repairs is valid...a guy tears up his mustang. I don't think there are many never-used (what car guys call "new old stock") surplus fuselage or wing sections waiting on a shelf somewhere. So the section is rebuilt. Again, when you look at an aircraft don't kid yourself that you're looking at WWII-era metal formed by Joe at Inglewood or Dallas and riveted by Rosie on the night shift while she's thinking of her sweetheart who's off fighting somewhere.


Sure, some are more original than others. There are probably a few out there that haven't had crash damage or wear/corrosion/age issues.
Those who try to differentiate warbirds to that extent are either snobs or naive.

_________________
Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.
Note political free signature.
I figure if you wanted my opinion on items unrelated to this forum, you'd ask for it.