Warbird Information Exchange

With all the discussion recently about the future of warbirds and the effort to get more people, specifically young people, involved in the warbird scene. I wonder what the true predominant interest in warbirds actual is? Is it because most high profile warbirds usually are out of reach for most people and we always seem to want what we usually cannot have? or is it possibly that the historical value of warbirds is an emotional draw for most people who respect their history? Obviously warbirds are very popular in general aviation or they wouldn't be so expensive and valuable. I have two very simple and obvious attractions to warbirds .... The way they look and sound in flight and what they represent from a time in history. The rest is icing on the cake for me. I could and usually can stand and stare at a warbird for a very long time and I tend to have very fond personal feelings inside that I couldn't possibly explain to anyone else. I have been known to drive alone to many an airfield in many far away places just to look at a warbird parked. No one around but me and for a short time I feel I'm the caretaker of that warbird ... And to tell you the truth, I usually feel like a million bucks afterward .... Life is good when you have a passion for warbirds isn't it? ... Contrary to how I felt as a kid, It really is cool to love warbirds ...

As much as I enjoy learning and teaching the 787 to folks, I've always said that I'd drop an intense conversation with the Pope to watch a WW2 era aircraft fly past. I guess my feelings can best be described by the 11X14 picture my ex took of me @ Arlington WA. EAA show in the early 90's of me standing in front of 'The Dragon and his Tail' pointing at the now long ago stolen sign in the nose turret that read 'JETS ARE FOR KIDS' It used to hang over my desk when I was an Instructor @ BADWRENCH and never failed to generate a conversation.

I can still remember the first airplane I was really concious of, I was about 5 or 6 and watched a United DC-4 climbing out over my parents house, I can still hear those R-2000's rumbling. Aside from a TF dragster, what else has the hypnotic attraction to a true gearhead of 4 R-2800's idling past on a DC-6? If you could sell that sound to kids with rice rocket cars, you'd make a million.

Radial engines and Steam powered trains or boats are living breathing things, each with it's own personallity that need to have the best coaxed out of them by competent thinking individuals who's talents I really admire, Jets and newer trains are all "PHD" Push Here Dummy and have no soul. Don't believe me? go to the Butler Aviation postings and see just how busy two guys can be in the pointy end of a DC-7 while flying into a canyon full of burning trees.

They carry the spirit of a time when you really had to know how to fly because there wasn't a GPS to show you where the bathroom was located, you better be able to navigate to it by compass and Mk. 1 eyeball.

Once you get SKYDROL in your blood, you're hooked, I think aviation is a legal intoxicant for most of us-

We are becoming a vanishing breed, I see students every week who've never opened the hood on their car (because there's nothing they can fix any more) who all think they can text an airplane together when I was a kid you better know how to fix your only car or you walked 'cause no one had money for a shop to fix it.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I got into warbirds when I was approximately 5 years old. I remember in Kindergarten, one of my kiddie classmates brought some pictures of his Dad's remote control Zero into class. I thought it was just cool. This was in the early 70's, long before warbirds were popular or even expensive. I guess, initially on, for me at least, it was purely aesthetic. I just liked the way they looked and the way they were painted. Later on, as I got older, I began to appreciate what these machines were symbolic of - the fight for freedom, and the sacrifices of many, many people for a cause much greater than themselves. So, then in my teens, I came to appreciate the true meaning of warbirds and the courageous, heroic men who made the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. In 1976, I discovered Pappy Boyington and the Black Sheep and in 1978, I discovered Air Classics magazine. After that, I knew I would be hooked for life. Of course, it didn't hurt that I grew up in an aviation family, though my Father was more into current military airplanes than warbirds at the time. I always knew I wanted to be a pilot, and I suceeded in that. But having a heavy interest in warbirds and not civil aviation - that was my own doing.

Hmmmmm.....what a thought inducing thread Hellcat

I always had an inexplicable desire to look up when I was a little kid, to see what was flying overhead. I remember taking some chiding from others as to just what was "wrong" with me.
When I joined the Air Force and got the opportunity to walk the parade grounds at Lackland, I was in what I thought to be heaven, but still could not explain my problem with wanting to just stand in front of certain planes and stare or daydream. I remember the hot lust that coursed through me the first time I layed eyes on an F-106 at MinotAFB or seeing the long lines of B-52s on the maintenance ramp. I remember sitting in front of The Lady of the Lake (B-29/50 in the pond at Eilson) wondering why she was there and listening to her talk to me. First trip to Oshkosh was one of the very highest points in my life, bar none. Then, spending countless hours at the Grissom Air Museum, just sitting and looking at all of the planes on display...long after the grounds were closed. Having the entire place to myself I felt like I was king of the world.
The gentleman in charge of taking care of the planes at Grissom asked me once if I could explain to him my total infatuation with the planes there as well as anything that flys in general. He said that if I could put down in writing or figure out how to verbally express my infatuation, he would love to be able to use it to enitce younger people to become interested. At 45 years old now, I still cannot find the words to express what I feel inside when I gaze upon a work of art such as an old airplane or warbird. I do agree wholeheartedly that after spending some time with one of the old girls, my batteries feel re-charged or I feel somehow rejuvenated....some danged thing like that. I've never been able to figure out how someone could look at a painting by Monet or some other famous artist and feel moved by the rendering. Same as I cannot explain what goes on inside of me when I gaze upon an old airplane. I have a disease of which there is no cure!
Sorry for rambling...thought I would try to splain it again...didn't work this time either, but it is nice to be here at WIX, knowing that there are others afflicted with the same debilitating disorder as I have!

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Earn my respect and never lose it.
Demand my respect and never gain it. -Me

...just another plane dreamer.

As most of you know, I grew up during WWII and have had a love for warbirds since that time. The look and the sound all bring back memories of my "ute". It was a horrendous time for the world but being only 6-10, I didn't really understand that. All I knew was they were/are an emotional experience. I sometimes wish I'd been born around 1922 so I might have had a chance to fly in WWII. Then again, I sometimes wish I'd been born around 1972 so I might have a chance to fly one now. Guess I'll just have to "make do" with what I was dealt. (Long sigh )

Mudge the nostalgic

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Land of the free because of the brave

Warbirds have been in my blood from the time I was six or seven paging through dad's 1950s USAF photo album and Kodachrome slides filled with images of him flying Air Defense Command F-89Cs. I get the same high and emotional reactions from seeing warbirds, especially when they're fired up and running/flying. I like all eras of warbirds, though my interest wanes past anything newer than say an F-4E. I get the biggest rush out of flying my T-33 even if I gotta dumb myself down from higher cognitive and spiritual pecking order places of propdom to "push here" on the souless beast to make it "go". I like props and jets and kinda like blondes and brunettes...kinda apples and oranges but all have their appeal. I am soon checking out on a CAF PT-26 and plan to partner on a T-6 and one day own an Avenger, Wildcat, or God forsaken F-86 or some combination of the above. Like the the rest of youz guys, I am diseased beyond repair with warbirditis.

Warbirds signify a time in our history never to be repeated with regards to the events that led up to and developed in WWII. Both in the massive development in aircraft technology needed to fight the war and the massive production buildup done , in large part , by many people with limited or no aviation background prior to the war. The same goes for those who flew and maintained them. Looking at those aircraft today they are both simple and complex at the same time. Simple in today's world of jets, turbines and computerized systems but complex when you put them in perspective to the aircraft that were being used by the military's of the world just prior to WWII.

To me, these aircraft all have different personalities as well. I like modern airplanes OK but they just seem more generic and , I guess, computerized. the old airplanes all seem more alive to me.

Just my 2 cents

For me, there's the sense of history I get from looking at a warbird and the sense of nostalgia (for a perhaps better time) that I get from seeing a propliner. But I think that the greatest draw is the fact that these aircraft were the ultimate machine or technology of their time. Other than a few purpose built air racers there will never be another piston-engined, propellor driven aircraft that surpasses the performance of the Bearcat, Hawker Sea Fury, long nose FW190, P-51H or other late war designs. The other thing is the sound; there's nothing like a Merlin, R2800 or Centaurus at take off power to get your attention. And that's something you're never going to get from a static museum piece...

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"They can teach MONKEYS to fly better than that"

http://www.heritageflight.org
http://www.bravo369.org

This is nice subject matter.

I like wartime a/c due to the fact my Dad's bedtime stories/reading war comics ie Air Ace etc and wartime stuff that seemed to underline the way of thinking in the early days in NZ. "We won... and thank the Lord it's over etc". My uncles stories of Stuka's screaming down to unload death and destruction.. and all the women telling them " that is too much for a young mind..." Loved them stories.

First model a Corsair from Dad, second a tiwn, the Boxcar and on it went pocket money on this and this and.... Joined the Air =Traing Corps and had a blast aprt from one over the top control freak that we later found out stole all the $$$ that he had said would be a micro light traing a/c that he obtained from our donations for said opportunity... "un said typeingZ" LOL

Went to join up and as an asthmatic "we can MIGHT offer you a position as a ....
I wanted to be a fighter pilot... Can they not see that a person that chooses to take that role should get it... NO, no, no

Became instead a drug freak and messed up big time.
Clean now many many years later but have passion for those WW2 a/c
mainly fighters ie Spitfire, Mustang, Bf/Me 109, P40 yah...

Dennis

My interest stems from my dad being a WWII Naval airman. I was born in 1954 and 'Two' was still fresh in the minds of most of the population. Every kid on the block had a family member of some kind who was in it and we all knew what each other's dad did in the war.
I have always been interested in and wanted to work on big loud noisy machines. My schoolteacher parents wanted me to have a desk job in an office but eventually I got hands on with machines. I was 51 when I signed on at Lone Star and got my chance to mess with real warbirds. Better late than never. Fast cars and 20 years of street bikes got in there but warbirds never totally left my mind.
A couple of thousand cubes lighting up with short open pipes...HOO-AH!

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"I love the smell of 100LL in the morning."

I like noisy leaky old stuff!

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"Hindsight is usually 20% off!"