Did you get to Planes of Fame or just Yank’s?

If the question is for me, I did both.
I never minded the cows, since I was flying I welcomed the emergency landing areas the farms offered.

In fact I spent a week there while doing some antique helicopter flying (Bell 47) at Zemlock’s at Chino.
It gave me lots of free time to visit and see everything on the field.
I was treated to a personal tour of POF by a volunteer and introduced to Steve Hinton, who was a very nice (and modest) guy.
The folks at Yanks are always great too. (On an early visit many years ago, I was told to just wander around the restoration area and was treated to the sight of a “hippie” loooking guy working on a P-47N wing guided by copies of original blueprints. Really neat.).

I also went over to the B-25 rebuild shop and looked around…didn’t get thrown out…and looked through fences at their storage area which included the Twilight Zone B-25.

Really, I thought by now anyone who has read anything about Welch knew that. 😀
It probably helped get him his post-war job with North American Aviation as a test pilot.

What I find inspiring about him is his death in an F-100 due to inertia roll yaw coupling.
Back then, test pilots put it all on the line.
No computer simulators to test designs beforehand.
They were testing supersonic jets when the industry hadn’t progressed far…in terms of some of their knowledge and procedures…from the air racing and glory days of flight testing in the the 30s.

One more item about Welch, there is a UFO book out there that blames his death on his jet being shot down by a flying saucer.:rolleyes:

Very nice photos…

First calll I’d maker would be to Nelson Ezell…see what he thinks about its viability.
Wonder if there are any spare rear fuselages and wing sets out there?

For what it’s worth…I don’t present myself as any kind of expert…

It never hurts to put aircraft into a historic perspective.
A set piece featuring different types of aircraft working in concert is a mini history less on for the average (non-historic aviation expert) guy.
The CAF in the USA has been doing it for years…with their Pearl Harbour attack and even a Vietnam era air assault.

Likeswise, if probably wouldn’t hurt to place period items around aircraft while they’re on the ground. We some of this with reenactors, but it could be done with commercial types as well. Put a plane in a period ground setting with people in period costumes and vintage cars. I like seeing old cars with old planes, it usually makes the airplanes seem ahead of their time.
The Goodwood revival is a huge success in part because of efforts like this.

To state the obvious, for airshows to continue, they need to expand their audience…and to most non-plane people, seeing a succession of Spitfires and Mustangs make flypasts and doing mild aerobatics gets old after awhile.

I don’t believe it’s really 140,000…
BUT IF IT IS….
What does that come to per flight hour? 😀

Fair comment John, but let’s not forget that Patton was not alone in the military as being a rabid anti-communist, Patton was a good soldier (in a particular array of warfare types) but I wouldn’t trust his political or social nous.

Yes but please recall pre-war the Army was so small and politically inconsequential that the opinons of a few officers weren’t widely considered.
And in the US, perhaps even more so than the UK, the military was very subserviant to the politicians. In other word, no one cared what they said so Patton’s warnings/opinions would have been dismissed, if they were heard at all.

(In fact, there was a feeling from a good part of the populace that anyone making a career of the military was somehow a social outcast. In the case of enlisted troops either drunks or thinly veiled criminals and they felt officers were there because they were of the “horsey set” like the wealthy Patton (or in the case of the Navy or Air Corps like to play with expensive toys…ships and planes) or they couldn’t get a job anywhere else).