Restoration/Reproduction Archives - Page 2 of 4

B-25 Restoration Update

Restoring a WW II bomber is a momentous labor, requiring no small portion of blood, sweat, and tears. A restoration team out of Brighton, Michigan is currently hard at work on a North American B-25J Mitchell, serial number 44-30733. Better known as The Sandbar Mitchell, it was rescued in 2013 from a sand bar on a […]

Fairey Swordfish Restoration [VIDEO]

This is the story of the marathon 26 month restoration of the world’s oldest flying Fairey Swordfish, W5856, filmed at the Brough factory by British Aerospace in the ’90’s. What an extraordinary aircraft the Fairey Swordfish turned out to be. Born at the end of the biplane era, this was an aircraft totally unsuited to […]

Warbirds: Do They Have a Future?

With the prices of restorable warbirds escalating out of sight and new restorations taking to the air almost daily, we often lose sight of the fact that at one time, most of those airplanes were cast off as junk. There were few museums and almost no private collectors who tracked historic aircraft down and saved […]

Aviation Insider: A Tale of the Times

We’ll lose the XC-99 and it won’t be alone Big, historic airplanes could be the aeronautical definition of “conundrum” for museum people. No one wants to see a truly historic airplane, such as the XC-99 disintegrate into powdery oxide while in outside storage. However, the realities of space and financing determine the prioritization for every […]

The Dragon’s Den

As everyone knows, few DH 89 Dragon Rapides remain airworthy today. Constructed of wood and fabric, time has deteriorated their glued joints, and timber airframe components have rotted on these iconic 1930s British passenger biplanes. So the arrival of a Dragon Rapide at the EAA’s AirVenture Oshkosh was a delightful surprise. Touching down at Oshkosh […]

Mustangs At Heart

It’s no secret that the P-51 Mustang and the Ford Mustang share a special bond; after all, the car was named after the airplane. The P-51 was arguably the most successful fighter aircraft of the Second World War, dominating in the European theater and making a large end of the war contribution in the Pacific. […]

Museums’ Me 262 Gets its Colors

Thursday, May 10, 2019. The Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum (FHCAM) unveiled the paint scheme of its highly anticipated Me 262 project. The Me 262 was acquired by the museum back in 2000 and its restoration has been kept very quiet until now! FHCAM is excited to unveil, to you for the first time, […]

Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum

On the southwest corner of Falcon Field Airport in Mesa, Arizona, are the 55,000-square-foot hangars of the Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum (AZCAF). As part of the museum established in Texas, this museum was started in 1977, with the restoration of a B-17G Fortress named “Sentimental Journey.” Despite the vintage aircraft behind a chain-link fence, […]

“Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby” B-17 Flying Fortress

“Shoo Shoo Baby” is a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress that was preserved and on public display. A B-17G-35-BO, (SN 42-32076), it was named by her crew for a song of the same name sung by The Andrews Sisters, a favorite of crew chief T/Sgt. Hank Cordes. Photographs of the bomber indicate that a third “Shoo” […]

Photo of Andrew Pittman ACE Flight lead 2018

Stallion 51 Pays It Forward

Stallion 51 Corporation has been in the business of sharing the cockpit of their dual control Mustang for over 30 years. During those decades thousands of people have experienced the elegance and grace of the quintessential WWII fighter. Some have come to fly in the aircraft their grandfather or grandmother flew or the aircraft they […]