Bevo, I have quite a lot of experience in the warbird community, including dealing with the USN on ownership issues of WWII wrecks.
Not sure what it is exactly that I'm "blind" to, though.
That would be what most people call "the big picture".
Thanks for the negative rep, though.
It's a standard response to someone who is caught talking out of their ass.
Examples? Obviously not all of them are sole survivors...but at this point, where WWII aircraft are a finite resource.....
Resource?
Oil is a resource. Natural gas is a resource. Underwater wrecks are Navy property, most often maritime grave sites, and not someone's "treasure hunt".
The integrity of these grave sites and the men who died fighting for their country who still lie at their battle station trumps the desire of some random millionaire to fly a vintage war bird in his local airshow. Every time. End of story.
I can't see the rationalization for leaving *any* of them that aren't grave sites in place.
Because you don't get the fact that people who go out treasure hunting don't do a good job of discriminating between "salvage" and "grave robbing". They get worse at it when their paycheck is on the line.
But, apparently since I'm in the USAF, and my service doesn't have a history, I don't have a valid viewpoint on this -- even though my opinion has absolutely zero to do with the service I'm in, and one I had experience with long before I ever took an oath of office in the DoD.
Your service's lack of history makes the ignorant nature of your criticism somewhat ironic. That's why I said it was "funny". The reason you don't have a valid viewpoint on the subject is because you are obviously clueless of the history involved, and unscrupulous nature of many of the people who go out in the name of "salvage" or "preserving history" when the facts are that they are mostly interested in turning a buck and getting their picture in the paper.
For every "good salvage" story, there is another where these teams (like the clowns at Bent Prop) totally fuck up a crash site, destroy remains, or even worse (and someone has to recover the skull of a USMC aviator that is on display at a local bar)...and these situations have to be explained to the family.
Do you have any idea the number of sailors from WW2 that didn't come back? The blanket policy of "leave crash sites the hell alone" makes perfect sense to anyone with half a brain and 15 minutes of experience in this arena. The ratio of wrecks that are grave sites compared to the wreaks that are not is on the order of 50-1.
Once again, the article that was linked as the subject of the original post is further proof that your assertion that:
"The Navy would rather see them decay into nothing than actually preserve them."
Is totally without merit.
)
Today the Corsair is fully restored and can be seen in the Seattle Museum of Flight at Boeing Field.
