I was wondering this same thing when I read the article about the Mosquito FB.26 in this month’s Flypast. The article doesn’t say how much of the original structure will go into the flying restoration but the implications were that the ‘big bits’ will be all new.
I’m not saying original aircraft should be left to rot where they stand, I’ll make that clear now, but will future generations throw up their hands in horror to think that we could have preserved these largely original aircraft as they are and simply built flying replicas (which apparently we are more than capable of doing) to get our airshow kicks? What is the value of a restoration when everyone knows that it’s just an original data plate riveted to a brand new aircraft? Even if the original bits are retained and used in a static display item? We have replicas of rare types (Fw190, Me262) so why not be honest and have new build Spits and Hurricanes as well, and preserve the wreckage of existing types as well as we can for history’s sake?
I’ll add for the record how much I admire the restorers and how much poorer my life would be without flying Spitfires and Hurricanes etc. – their value and skills are not in doubt, but I’d be just as happy in the knowledge that the aircraft I saw at airshows didn’t have the identity of an original aircraft.
I think everybody here applauds the efforts ,skills and investments made by those who restore and rebuild flyers…… no disagreement there!
But the original issue raised by Graham F who started this thread was concerned mainly for the fate of the original non-airworthy material such as the WW2 original wings fitted to R4118.Only Robbo has tried to address this question by stating that there is a considerable amount of original material in store. I wonder how many static Hurricane or Spitfire restorations have access to non-airworthy 1940s materials removed in flying rebuild processes & I wonder how much is just scrapped? I did read in Flypast that the wartime skin of TD248 was given to a static project
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