At the close of WW2 there were acres of warbirds, and new spare parts, some of the airplanes only had ferry time on them from the factory to the storage facility. They were sold for scrap.
One of the fellows I flew charter with was of that era, upon discharge he bought a P 51 to fly in the Bendix air race for $1,500 dollars. Being a hotshot WW2 fighter pilot he ran the whole race at military power until the engine blew, made an emergency landing somewhere in the wilds of Kansas and sold it for scrap. He crashed, raced, ruined, and wore out several other fighters of the era.. all because they were scrap anyway and cheap. Had he kept them all they would be worth millions now. Standard military procedure at that time was to always fuel up an airplane upon landing, so the airplanes setting in depot were full of fuel. One scrap dealer bought up all the "scrap" he could get, drained the tanks and started "Whiting Gas Stations" which were an Icon along Route 66 for a long time. He then crushed and sold all the airplanes for scrap aluminum. They had onsite smelters at Kingman AZ for example. You can google "Kingman ww2 airplanes" and should find pictures of acres of fighters and bombers flown there and "stored".. to be sold. Goodyear AZ also had a huge depot, as well as Davis Monthan in Tucson AZ [still active storage site]. On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 6:55 PM, Meade Dillon <dillonm...@gmail.com> wrote: > The Carolina Wing is not too far from you Wilton, Southern Pines NC. > > Often in the summer I see a few fly over the beach here in Charleston. No > acrobatics, just a nice slow pass, a few thousand feet up. > > Max Dillon, > Charleston SC > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those > individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner > has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor. > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
