As a person who grew up in North Queensland, Australia where a lot of the aeroplanes that flew in the battle for the Coral Sea and the americans who flew them were based/trained , I see very little value in having a memorial out in the remote place.
I prefer to see the wrecks recovered and restored where possible or used in the restoration of other aircraft. A memorial could be errected there in the form of a stone cairn with a information plate giving details of the aircraft that crashed there.
cheers
Hi Proctor,
I don’t think its a crash site, but rather a dump site, so the memorial i mentioned would have been sort of a general war memorial. Showing that once that island was a place of combat flying.
In non-aviation archeology they often record everything about a site, then leave it untouched for future generations. They realise that there are more relics, than there are museums to hold and restore them (and these museums often have government backing).
When I say preserving them in situ, I do mean preserve. If an aircraft of that type should later be rebuild, people are able to use the preserved aircraft as “templates”. Trying to rebuild one of the actual aircraft (as seen on the pictures) would never produce anything airworthy. There is not one bit on those planes that will ever fly (ok, there might be one or two bits, but not enough to warrent a recovery).
They could be used as basis for a diorama, but they are already in the most perfect diorama possible. Besides, most museums are looking to display aircraft, not wrecks.
Unless a restoration group can produce a full restoration plan (or a defined plan to use parts in aircraft already under restoration) and provide proof of the financial means to execute that plan, I’m pretty much against recovering aircraft in that state. There are aircraft out there, that are in a far better condition, and those should have priority. Maybe the Americans should lobby their government for access to US navy aircraft 😎
Just to set the record straight, i too would like to see them restored, but I don’t think that would happen. If they are recovered, I’m willing to bet that they will end in storage, never to be seen again. A project of that size, would need serious commitment from a large group of people (not to mention quite a lot of money). Unless one of the major museums are willing to undertake it (and most of them already have a storage room full of aircraft, just waiting their turn – rare and historic aircraft too), such a restoration would stall and change hands a number of times, before the aircraft finally end up as parts scattered all over the place (a seat here, an instrument panel here and a cool cylinder on the shelf).
There is not enough interest in japanese warbirds (of that size) to finance a full restoration. Had it been a US/UK warbird, things might have been different.
I would love to be proven wrong, but having seen plenty of pictures of private “restoration projects” (none mentioned), I’m very reluctant to belive these aircraft would be any different.
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