Warbird Information Exchange

This topic probably has already been explored, however I would like to open this up for discussion again. Like many of you arm chair aviators, I'm a WWII buff. I cringe when I see old photos of Kingman Airfield where many WWII aircraft were scrapped in 1946 (Their reason for this was to promote future aircraft development) My question is; If they hadn't scrapped so many of these aircraft, would they be as desirable to see at airshows today? Or would they be as common as seeing a Cessna 172?

What-ifs aside, I don't enjoy aircraft because of their rarity, but rather for their personality and design. Even if warbirds were as common as anything out there, they're still interesting aircraft imho.

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Had all the warbirds not been scrapped after the war,and the warbird craze not taken hold, you probably would have seen a lot of them sitting in the weeds rotting away at all types of airports across the country...until the price of fuel, maintenence, insurance, tie-down, hangar fees, etc. started figuring in the equasion.....Do you remember during the late 60's thru the 70's, where at least every airport had their Alon/Forney Aircoupe's, Navion's, Swift's, Stinsons, Tri-Pacers, etc all in a state of decay? I believe it would have been the same....they would all have started disapearing due to the unsightly nature of them and airport expansion.....and so it goes...

Thanks Gary, that's what I was looking for, as I've seen such aircraft lay derelict back in the 1970's. It proves my point that maybe (just maybe) it was a good thing the Gov't did what it did after WWII.

Economics was the major consideration. Too much $ to fly, and too big to move, deterioration outside-scrapping is the end result.

A good example is all the surplus TBM's and A-26's we see today. Not worth too much, because not enough people can afford to fly. All aircraft released together from service at once, driving down demand. 10-15 years from now, the price could be driven up as other strongly desireable aircraft become too rare w/ prices driven up.

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There was a committee set up by the War Department and other federal agencies in 1943 to plan what to do with all the surplus equipment after the War. Even though victory wasn't completely assured at the time the planning started, it had been realized that there were going to be a lot of vehicles, weapons, facilities, and aircraft that wouldn't have uses in a peacetime world.

Scott

True and the aircraft manufacturer's actively lobbied the commission not to allow the surplus of large numbers of bombers. They also lobbied the CAA not to allow the conversion of bombers into airliners. They were all working on post war airliner designs and did not want to see the market flooded with cheap ex-government aircraft as happened after WW1. While there were numbers of transports built there weren't enough of those to flood the expected postwar market and most had to be converted to airliner configuration which the manufacturer's were in good position to exploit. I would bet that auto and train manufacturer's lobbied in the same way.

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