8/5/2023 0 Comments Warbirds for saleThere is an incredible trove for people who relish old airplanes and flock to any of a few hundred aviation museums around the United States just to be near one, or perhaps even touch the metal, knowing that decades earlier, that same airplane might have been part of a frenzied dogfight or early morning bombing raid.Ĭonsider Doc for just a minute, one of the most famous of the 4,000 Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft that were built. SBD Dauntlesses, F4F-3 Wildcats and TBD-1 Devastators are expected to be part of the find. In early March, the Smithsonian put the number of aircraft from the Lex discovered to date at 11 out of a possible 35 aboard. No one knows yet just how many aircraft can or will be pulled out of the wreck of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, recently discovered on the ocean bottom east of Australia. Word has it dozens more are sitting on the bottom of that lake too, waiting for someone willing to hire the divers to locate them and pay to retrieve them from the muck. Random finds do happen now and then, such as the Grumman Wildcat a warbird enthusiast fished out of Lake Michigan near Chicago. Not all warbirds are found through dealers like Courtesy. Clark says he also trades in warbird projects, airplanes no longer airworthy but still desperately searching for the right person to restore them to flying condition. Warbirds flying today include no secret devices that could fall into the hands of nefarious individuals, hence the reason you don’t, for example, see a privately owned F-16. Warbirds sprang from many countries, but primarily the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan. Airplanes could range from a Boeing B-29 to a North American P-51 to a Cessna O-2 and dozens in between. With few examples of World War I aircraft in existence, the market primarily encompasses aircraft created just before World War II up through the end of Vietnam. He says these owners are really just caretakers of history.īy definition, a warbird is a vintage military aircraft that found its way into the hands of a civilian owner. Clark’s been selling warbirds for 40 years and knew early on he wanted to be part of the warbird community. He too caught the warbird bug and now lives with dozens of them each year, although only until he can match them up with a new owner. Like me, Clark volunteered at the early Rockford airshows, although we only recently met. Despite those drawbacks, Mark Clark, president of Courtesy Aircraft in Rockford, says some 6,000 or so warbirds are still on the FAA registry, although not all are in flying condition. For a few lucky pilots though, the chance to make that leap from observer to owner becomes reality.īy today’s standards, warbirds are clunky, noisy, dirty, inefficient and expensive to operate, not to mention almost completely impractical. Around the world, warbirds are treated as senior citizens should be, with much reverence, love and care. You might at first think the fan base for 70- or 80-year-old airplanes is small, but most crazies are like me, attracted to these historical artifacts by the romance of what once was - sprinkled with a dash of awe and respect for those who expertly flew and maintained them in combat. My interest in old airplanes never really made sense to most people I knew, not even to me, really, yet I hungered to see and touch a Corsair or a Mitchell bomber or an old Boeing whenever I could, even years later when I found myself surrounded by a flock of F-100s on my first Air Force base assignment.Īirplane aficionados come in all shapes, sizes, ages, sexes and nationalities, as do the airplanes they drool over. I learned much about that 20,000-pound single-engine piston fighter, facts I still remember. He’d stop by our house when he was home on leave and quiz me about the airplanes I’d been watching or reading about. Then there was my Air Force veteran cousin, who flew A-1 Skyraiders during the Vietnam War. “You were the kid with the green hat standing there with his mouth wide open, weren’t you?” he asked. I recall meeting a P-51 pilot late one afternoon who said he remembered passing me while taxiing in. Hundreds of homebuilts, factory-builts and, of course, warbirds taxied past. I worked the flight line with a pair of painted ping-pong paddles, pointing aircraft that passed in the grass to their parking spots. It was during a summer volunteer job at the EAA Airshow in Rockford, Illinois, the precursor to AirVenture. Ultralight airplane price.I have never thought of myself as much of a warbird guy - at least until I went back in time to the summer I was unsuspectingly infected with a love for old military airplanes.
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