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#1
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Why were almost all of them scrapped?
Didn't ANYBODY after WW2 have the love of airplanes and the foresight
to buy at least one military airplane, especially since they were so cheap? What were they thinking?! Did they not see the value of these planes for future generations? Why didn't some civilians simply buy a B-17 for $700 and park it in their yard? Land is cheap in rural areas. These airplanes are so precious to me. I have loved the glory of ww2 fighters and bombers since the earliest childhood. Another question: if someone had the money, would it be possible to use blueprints to build perfect reproductions of airplanes like the B-17 and P-40? |
#2
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Why were almost all of them scrapped?
Don't know about the USA, but in my country (New Zealand) you could not
legally fly a military warbird as a civilian aircraft until about the mid-1970s. Those few ex-military aircraft that were used were either based on an original civilian design (e.g. C-47, L-4 Cub) or were operated by commercial operators (such as airlines) that had enough financial resources to put the design through the full civil aviation assessment process. Many of the higher performance military machines had construction or flight characteristics that were not acceptable in a civilian environment. An example of this was the de Havilland Mosquito, which had a 'dead man's gap' - an engine failure just after lift-off and before the aircraft attained a certain speed just could not be controlled, and would always result in an uncontrollable roll towards the dead engine and a crash. Peter wrote: Didn't ANYBODY after WW2 have the love of airplanes and the foresight to buy at least one military airplane, especially since they were so cheap? What were they thinking?! Did they not see the value of these planes for future generations? Why didn't some civilians simply buy a B-17 for $700 and park it in their yard? Land is cheap in rural areas. These airplanes are so precious to me. I have loved the glory of ww2 fighters and bombers since the earliest childhood. |
#3
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Why were almost all of them scrapped?
Many of the higher performance military machines had construction or
flight characteristics that were not acceptable in a civilian environment. An example of this was the de Havilland Mosquito, which had a 'dead man's gap' - an engine failure just after lift-off and before the aircraft attained a certain speed just could not be controlled, and would always result in an uncontrollable roll towards the dead engine and a crash. Peter I flew some multis in service but haven't flown them since (too expensive!). But it's my impression that students are taught to quickly cut the good engine and land straight ahead. Wouldn't that work with a Mosquito? (I realize that landing a plywood box straight ahead at around 100 knots might not be the most pleasant thing to contemplate.) vince norris |
#4
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Why were almost all of them scrapped?
After the war the U.S. government did offer up considerable quantities of
surplus birds for sale. The sadly there were few takers. In the early 1950's you could have bought a P-51, B-17, B-25, etc., with only the ferry time from the factory to the storage base on the log, for just a couple hundred dollars. Movie studios purchased some for film work, others became executive transports, still others became fire bombers. Most were purchased by metals dealers and melted down for their aluminum which was in short supply after the war. The birds that were in inconvenient locations like the South Pacific were pushed into piles and burned, or dumped in the ocean. The fact of the matter is, as I have confirmed from conversations with lots of WWII veterans, when the guys were released from the service the last thing most of them ever wanted to do was sit in another cockpit. Most just wanted to get home and resume their interrupted lives. In addition, the dawn of the jet age had made the old prop birds obsolete over night. The guys that stayed in the service wanted to fly F-86s or F9Fs, not Mustangs or Corsairs. It is only through the efforts of a few individuals after the war, and a few Museums, that we have any preserved WWII birds at all. wrote in message oups.com... Didn't ANYBODY after WW2 have the love of airplanes and the foresight to buy at least one military airplane, especially since they were so cheap? What were they thinking?! Did they not see the value of these planes for future generations? Why didn't some civilians simply buy a B-17 for $700 and park it in their yard? Land is cheap in rural areas. These airplanes are so precious to me. I have loved the glory of ww2 fighters and bombers since the earliest childhood. Another question: if someone had the money, would it be possible to use blueprints to build perfect reproductions of airplanes like the B-17 and P-40? |
#5
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Why were almost all of them scrapped?
Brian Johnson wrote:
The fact of the matter is, as I have confirmed from conversations with lots of WWII veterans, when the guys were released from the service the last thing most of them ever wanted to do was sit in another cockpit. Ain't that the truth. This was a blow to some of the aircraft manufacturers like North American who thought that all these pilots would start snapping up personal GA aircraft like they were buying post-war cars. Didn't materialize. |
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