I would offer a dissenting view on private collections versus the “state” or established collections that are held in high regard. I remember Ken Ellis’s article when it was published in Flypast, and at the time I was about 12 and could not at the time conscience the scrapping of redundant aircraft for any reason. Over time my view has been strengthed by working for 30 years off and on with vintage aircraft.
Private collecting is and has been the foundation of the vintage aircraft preservation movement. Without it there would not be large museums maintained by the USAF, USN and to an extent, every other air arm in the world. Planes of Fame collection and Yanks Air Museum, both of Chino California have in seperate and different ways managed to preserve and maintain a vast number of planes before it was popular, Yanks having an antique collection that is simply awesome. While the RAF or USAF museums are “good” they tell a very small part of the aviation story, and while “Warbirds” are brilliant airshow aircraft…the Travel Air 4000, Beech Staggerwing, Short C Class and a host of other civilian types fall outside and lack “relevance”. Many of the civilian collectors, Greg Herrick among them, preserve historical planes that docents at our national museums cannot even identify. Aviation history is for the enthusiasts to write, not the paid civil servants that “like” what they do. Its for those that stay up till 3am on the computer perfecting databases, researching photographs and building collections of literature just as much as it belongs to the owners of individual vintage craft that expound their virtues to anyone who will listen, as well as to their wife who listens anyway. I say again, private collections and their pattern of collecting has driven the shape and way the major collections of the world collect.
The Caravelle was scrapped at the NEAM last month (irrelevant aircraft) , and several other large aircraft succumb every year worldwide by the museums tasked to protect them. The hard work of aircraft preservation is not the cherishing of a Spitfire XIV that everyone knows is stunning and exciting, but the preservation and conservation of the pedestrian “hens teeth” large airframes that wage a daily war against corrosion and the bottom line. In the USA, our B-47’s, B-52’s and other large aircraft are maintained outside. While it isn’t the UK, many will not survive the next 40 years or so. NEAM seems to be shifting to a military based collection, finding the warbird story more riveting than the essential nature of mass transport…
It seems to me that only the dedicated action of “civilians” can adopt and maintain the state of large preserved aircraft. Civilians also maintain the many “unremarkable” but essential types that should be allowed to fly versus hang from rafters on cables…Who does a better job of displaying a Puss Moth, the owner who lavishes his own personal airplane with care, or a national museum…? I am inspired by the Vulcan to the SKy movement as examples of what we can be at our best! In my own time now I have my historic plane, and I spend my money on it without much thought for my future in some cases. I will own it for a while, and hopefully someone down the road sees in her what I do, and puts their own name on it. Its not rare or super exotic. But it certainly shows the form, technical accountability and perfection acheived by her designers. And she is my muse because of it…
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