I don’t quite understand Phantom cockpits, I mean some people are able to aquire/sell them, others who are ‘in the know’ can’t rescue them when they are being destroyed and some have even had them taken back and scrapped. Is it different rules for different airframes?
Paul
The RAF Phantoms were all in the main covered by the arms reduction treaties agreed with the Russians at the end of the cold war. This lead to the ‘mass scrappings’ at Wattisham and Leuchars, which involved the complete fragmentation of the frames with Russian witnesses. This is what also led to one or two examples being re-possesed after the cockpits were squirrelled out of the yards, although there are one or two others which escaped the ‘recall’ and been stashed away under the radar ever since (although these are now resurfacing) it is however still debatable whether these are legally ‘owned’ as far as the MOD are concerned.
The complete examples still on gate guard duty are similarly covered (hence the loss of the St Athan one recently). Those at Tangmere and Carlisle are loans via the RAFM, whilst the Duxford one is I guess now under the auspices of the IWM.
Mick Jennings was the only person who I know to actually get to own his cockpit, after many months / years of negotiation he finally got the MOD & Russians to acknowledge there was no restictions on it from an arms treaty perspective.
In the main the USAF Phantom airframes in Europe are all covered by USAFM loans, although I’m not to sure about the one at Baarlo, however I do not think even these would exist today if the loans were trying to be negotiated post 9/11.
Further afield I guess the rules are different, as demonstrated by the recent and impending Bruntingthorpe arrivals.
Sign In
