Vandalism, security measure, or something else?

"Mike Z." wrote in message
ink.net...
Peter,

I did the tour January 2nd and someone on the bus asked the same
questions.

The docent used a lot more words, but said basically the markings are
destroyed so that they don't turn up on ebay.

Weird. What's the stop someone from taking undamaged metal from the plane
and painting "U.S. Air Force" on it? Or do they just expect buyers to know
that the markings are damaged this way, and so know that anything like that
for sale must be a forgery? And what about the rest of the airplane? There
are any number of other parts collectors would be happy with. Why focus on
the markings?

Anyway, thanks for passing that along. It still doesn't make much sense to
me, but at least it explains the intent.

Pete