bombadier29 wrote:
What people seem to forget a lot when dealing with Dave Tallichet and his collection is that all of that stuff belonged to him and it was on loan. The museums, groups and organizations all knew he could take the planes back and they stood to loose everything but people kept entering the agreements.
Regarding the P-47, the museum loves to tell the story of how great of condition they had the airplane in and how much work had been done to it and how great it was. The person that purchased the airplane and had it restored-again-tells a totally different story of the great condition.
Your right, they were on loan, but they were also under contract with us.
I was told that the reason why the 47 and 51 left was because he filed bankruptcy and the judge ordered him to sell them. That p-51 was never supposed to leave the state of Pennsylvania as a part of the agreement in which he got it from the military. It has been sitting in storage since then.
As for the 47, sure they may have had it restored again but that's there prerogative. That does not mean what was done was bad or wrong. Maybe he wanted it restored to a different level of detail or a slightly different configuration. I don't know as I don't know the history of the plane except for when it was with us. All I'm saying is that we would have been flying it very shortly after they took it, at least that is what I have been told.
Again, both were before my time there, so I personally don't know, but that is what I have been told by numerous members who were heavily involved with both planes.