Warbird Information Exchange

If someone offered a fair & reasonable amount of money for the folks who own P-47's and P-38's to gather in a location that would be also fair and reasonable. How many currently airworthy aircraft could possibly be gathered? I could count 11 P-47's and 6 P-38's. this is currently flyable aircraft and under the assumption that all owners would be willing to fly a bit of a distance. this is also under the assumption that the money offered would be worth the travel for the aircraft. remember that P-51's did something similar this past year.

4 P-38s presently flyable
2 close to flying
Several more under restoration
Others, nominally flyable, now in museums

Thunder Over Michigan will be hosting a gathering of Jugs this year, they have 5 but it will jump to six as Tar Heel Hal will be joing the group, along with a lot of other warbirds including the exetremely rare ME-109E from the Russull Group.

In putting together this kind of thing you have to think about not just the size of the potential pool out there but who are the owners, do they like to fly cross country, how active is the airplane really, who is doing the asking, does he have a good rep or favors owed in the community, where are the planes based, just what costs are you going to cover, what's in it for the owner/operators, what are their other commitments, etc.

When all the factors come together in a perfect storm you get something like GML with a buttload of planes.

When the factors are mixed, then IF your venue is convenient to a decent number of them, you might get say 3 P-38s like Chino last year or like however many P-47s TOM ends up with.

A joint P-38/P-47 gathering is a tough one because of geographical happenstance, P-38s happen to be concentrated in California and the south whereas many of the Jugs are on the eastern seaboard and the midwest. And since there is no particular reason to pick these two types for a joint gathering, it may not get many owners excited.

August