On 17 Feb 2007 22:02:22 -0800, "Kingfish"
wrote:
This makes me nuts. An irreplaceable Corsair is lost in an air race -
a Super Corsair at that, which I think was one of a handful of R-4360
powered F4Us. Glad the pilot got out, but another piece of history is
gone, and for no good reason IMHO...

Given the going prices for warbirds, if the data plate survived,
someone will "rebuild" the aircraft... A few years back, I stumbled
across Chino airport in SoCal... They have quite a few warbird
restoration shops over there... Spoke with one guy and he said that if
someone gives them a data plate, they can rebuild the rest of the
aircraft all around it from the blueprints that they had or could
get... Here's a link to a view of the airport... You can see quite a
few "spare parts" scattered around...

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=...&scene=6482833