What is the future of WW2 stuff for DCS?

[Nealius]

On 1/2/2025 at 5:58 PM, Slippa said:

Well, there is hope but it’s a long way off. i.e. (send funds ),

https://hawkertyphoon.com

There’s an airworthy Tempest now as well, though it’s a MkII so too late to see war-service.

Also, out of the 20,000+ Spitfires that were built from ‘38 to ‘48, around 60-70 are airworthy and flying today . That’s just the Spits. There are by far less Hurricanes but there are some. We have, I think, the only airworthy B-17 in Europe at Duxford but there are more dotted around. There’s 2 very precious Lancs already flying with another on the way here:

https://www.lincsaviation.co.uk Again, send funds. They have a Mossie project as well and thankfully more of those are airworthy in NZ and elsewhere too. I think Kermit Weeks has one that’s not far off airworthy too? 

There’s a thriving trade in restorations, plenty of specialised companies with jigs etc for the job and a lot of know-how. That’s always encouraging. I’d hope there’d be more vintage birds in the air in 20 years, not less, though airshows need supporting as well as other factors.

There’s plenty for ED to go on and if the Fighter Collection are still involved they really don’t have any excuses not to bring us more to play ahem, operate with .

 

 

 

Money alone isn't going to fix things. There's only so many hours that can be put on those airframes before they have to be put in a museum. Pilots are ageing out and either crashing them--more of a problem in the US, I think--or unable to pass on their knowledge because the younger generations are gatekept from carrying the torch on.

[Art-J]

Airframes are not that much of a problem in the current age of "dataplate restorations", where most of flying examples nowadays are ground-up rebuilds from a bucket of crash relics, with only a handful of components (plus sacred dataplate) being historic and original. That's why we're seeing illogical trend of rare airworthy warbirds number increasing since the '90s rather than decreasing as one might expect. Not that I'm complaining - keep the real originals in museums while flying rebuilds as much as possible so that everyone can enjoy them.

Engine overhauls are more problematic, 'cause scratch-rebuilding their parts, albeit possible nowadays, is much more difficult and costly.

As for the younger generations of pilots, I don't think it's a question of older guys gatekeeping, but rather diminishing interest of younger ones, combined with awareness of how huge moneypit every involvement in warbird activity is. 

[Slippa]

I was gonna make the same point. With the right provenance, not much more than a few bits can be enough to start one of those ‘restorations’. I’m not complaining much either. Preserve the precious bits and fly the ‘rebuilds’. I’d like to see more single seater Spits being restored but the money to be had with Two-seater ‘trainers’ and their pleasure flights, film work etc makes them a more promising build.

As long as we see more living history in the air I’m happy. To hear Merlins and Griffons tearing about really is something special. I don’t think there’ll be a shortage of willing pilots either. A lot of people would rip your arm off if offered a conversion course on any of em. I know I would .