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These early collectors with real vision, which would include Garber, Mantz, Maloney, Tallichet, Reinert had a smorgasbord of aircraft in front of them, with few resources. They had to pick-and-choose. No doubt the money Mantz received from the scrappers subsidized some of what was retained.
It is easy for us now to lament that this combat veteran or that early- or now-rare type was not preserved, but it is amazing what actually did survive in the US and nowhere else. These men were true visionaries, even if their perspective was different from ours. At that time, Mantz and others likely placed more value on aircraft that could easily be made airworthy and so the more war-worn aircraft were given up. Combat veterans were then common, and I am sure Mantz was later incredulous even in his own lifetime that these would become so rare.
For Paul Garber and the staff that supported the National Air Museum collections, there was not yet a good historical perspective, so emphasis was often on the late-war types (Do.335, Ar.234, Ju.388) to include aircraft of historically mundane histories (Bv.155, Ba.349, Ho.229), while more significant types (Me.110, Ju.87, Ju.88) were lost. For the Japanese aircraft, even less general knowledge was available, and nearly all the more significant types (Kate, Val, Betty, Tojo) are now only preserved as fragments.
It is easy in hindsight to lament some of these decisions, but even if a time machine could take us back so that we could have personally engaged in those discussions, the results may not have been much different. More modern technologies and aircraft in better condition that could be more easily flown or displayed would still have won out. They did not have a lot of resources and needed to justify their accessions to management and sponsors, and some old war-beaten crate did not mean much at the time.
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Kevin McCartney
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