maradamx3 wrote:
Warbird Kid wrote:
Considering the museum is located in a hangar at the airport, I hope they'll keep her airworthy and hopefully put together a maintenance / flying operation fo 8th plane. A sad shame to see her grounded after so many years. And another sad development to the LSFM. I fear their days are numbered.
Please explain why you think "their days are numbered". That isn't the impression you get when you visit the new, shiny, impressive facility and talk with docents.
Are there reasons beyong Thunderbird and covid?
They've
sold or traded a lot of airframes. There were a number that were hurricane damaged and I can't fault them for those, but a B-17 and a P-47? The key to me is that these were sold after they opened their new facility. I'm just concerned that building it may have hurt their financial situation. Also, their curator, a man who is well experienced in aviation museums, left for another museum at the beginning of 2020. To be fair, all of this could mean nothing, but taken together it worries me a bit.
Mike wrote:
The Evansville group are getting an absolute pasting on Facebook now they’ve unveiled the new scheme for the P-47, to the extent they’re now deleting comments in a fast and furious manner, and blocking anyone who dares to dissent from their view that the scheme is much more “elevated” than the “boring” wartime scheme they’re supposedly commemorating.
Facebook defaults to a "most relevant" sort on posts that hides some of the comments. I initially thought I had missed most of the dissenting opinions, but if you select "all comments" from the drop down menu, you can see a few.
junkman9096 wrote:
Pardon my ignorance, but that's not a paint scheme any P-47 actually wore in service, is it? I very highly doubt it, but I'm constantly reminded that there's so much World War II information out there I figured I might have missed something.
If it's not, that's bad. Really bad. There has to be some ace or well known P-47 pilot from Indiana they could have gone with instead. Or if they wanted to tie in to Evansville specifically, how about one of the presentation aircraft that I'm sure had to be used for presentation/worker morale? Something like the
B-17 "City of Savannah" at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. I guess that's what they were going for by referencing the
original "Hoosier Spirit", but that's really a strech.
Two theories: 1) Given that the new paint scheme differs relatively little from the old one, maybe this was a relative quick and cheap way to make a connection without spending so much time and money to paint the entire airplane. It's worth noting that, in reference to the comment below, they still haven't completely paid for the airplane yet. 2) This scheme may have been more palatable for the
official state aircraft designation effort.
Jim MacDonald wrote:
Is she going to still be a flyer or static in a museum?
According to a comment on their Facebook page:
Evansville P-47 Foundation wrote:
The current plan is to keep the P-47 airworthy. This does not mean that we will be flying it soon. It sat for nearly a year before it last flew and is fine to sit as long as conditions are right. There is a loan on the airplane and we cannot do anything until it is paid for first.
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