Treasure hunters all

Flight Journal, Dec 1999 by Davisson, Budd

OK; close your eyes and pretend you're driving down an interstate highway. If you're an Easterner, make it 1-95 from the Big Apple to Boston. If you're on the West Coast, make it 1-15, L.A. to Vegas. For those in the real world, make it 1-29, Omaha to Kansas City. The distance is about the same, 200 miles, give or take a little. Four hours if you're loafing. Three if the pedal's to the metal.

Got that image? Understand the distance? OK, picture that 200 miles lined with Bf 109s, wingtip to wingtip. That's 33,000 airplanes-the entire production run. Now picture a football field with Bf 109s lined up on the length of it; that's about how many originals are left. Let's talk about extinction and chronicling survivors, shall we?

Airplanes are some of man's most fragile artifacts. Like eggs, they are strong and robust in their element, but on the ground, they simply cannot survive the hazards that surround them. The casual poke of a finger ruptures aging fabric. A careless truck driver demolishes a wing. A thoughtless smoker ignites a fire that consumes dozens of aircraft. Even if the airplanes never get off the ground, the hazards surrounding them spell imminent demise. Maybe not today. Or tomorrow. But someday. The survival of an airplane is an uphill battle from the beginning.

Most Flight Journal readers understand that historical aircraft are rare. Maybe they don't know the exact numbers, but they do understand that these planes are on the edge of extinction. Just about everybody else, the great masses that populate civilizations, however, don't have a clue. Trust me. If asked, most will respond, "Not to worry. There are still hundreds of old aircraft in storage out in Arizona." Even folks on the periphery of aviation think that European barns are full of Fw 190s and that dozens of Zeros are still secreted away in ready-to-fly condition on Pacific islands.

Those of us within aviation, of course, know better. That's why the image of stumbling across an airplane in a barn, or abandoned in a field, or frozen in a glacier, remains a fond dream for most of us. There is a little treasure hunter in every living soul. If that weren't the case, Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb, wouldn't have been such a celebrity in the 1920s, and Mel Fisher's discovery of the Atocha treasure wouldn't have sent so many people running to their local scuba shops. Discovering something thought to be lost or so rare as to be virtually unknown nibbles at the edge of everyone's Walter Mitty fantasies. We want to be there when the shovel strikes the treasure chest. In aviation, that is the rarest of moments.

When Bill O'Dwyer's flashlight probed the dark recesses of that Connecticut barn, and the shredded, fabric-covered bones of a long-dead biplane-a 1929 Blackbird-came to light, he had realized the treasure hunter's fondest dream. What a moment! Even better, he's an accomplished journalist, so he can share that moment of glory with us.

How many moments such as those have gone unrecorded, or at least untold? Airplane-in-a-- barn stories haunt us all. Every time we pass a rural structure, we ask ourselves: what is its secret? Each time we see a jungle picture, we wonder: what is hiding behind the next tree? And, as we at Flight Journal sit here at our computers, we have to ask, how many of our readers are harboring discovery stories yet untold? How many pictures of airplanes lost, but now found, are languishing in sock drawers and private albums?

Every old airplane wasn't turned into beer cans. Some survived. Many have been discovered. And we want to hear your stories. We want to see your pictures. Cubs to Fokkers, Stearmans to Mustangs. Let us hear your tale. Go ahead; make the rest of us jealous.