I started my instrument training in a Link, at FlightSafety at LaGuardia in the late 1960s As I remember, the yoke and sacred six instruments were straight out of a Constellation.

Try the Aircraft Engine Historical Society, in the U. S. http://www.enginehistory.org

Such airplanes are originally abandoned because their engine(s) is/are run out and require–no choice–overhaul. And the cost of the overhaul or of a replacement engine(s) typically greatly exceeds the value of what would be an again-flyable airplane, hard as that might be to believe.

Abandonment, if one doesn’t want to bother parting it out, is purely a reasonable financial decision. And then, of course, the aircraft begins to deteriorate, and soon it’s literally worthless. None of the airplanes in those photos are potential collector’s items, except perhaps for the Twin Beech, but even they are a dime a dozen in the condition shown, at least in the U. S.

I guess it’s pretty easy to hoax credulous morons these days. Did nobody think to ask how the “sailor with a Brownie” could be so many places relatively simultaneously, some of them dozens of miles apart?

Yes, “Phoenix Squadron” is highly recommended.

Thanks for the post. Just bought the book–Kindle edition, in the U. S.

This is an ongoing series in the NYTimes. I believe they’ve run three installments with a fourth scheduled for tomorrow (Friday).

Congressman Lester Wolff of the Sixth District of New York?

I’ve lived in New York nearly all the years of my 74-year life and I’ve never heard of him. I doubt he even knew what a Constellation or a Stratocruiser looked like.