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Re: Great Barrier Reef Wrecks

Posted by Matt on Thu Oct 17, 2002 06:41:05 PM

In reply top Re: Great Barrier Reef Wrecks posted by Richard Allnutt on Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:12:21 AM

Hi Richard (and everyone),
Excellent information you give there mate, and I can testify to its accuracy. Certainly, extensive of use of parts from these underwater wrecks, in a flying plane will likely never happen. However, there is possible benefit of retrieving the odd airframe. In museums around the world, there are vast numbers of static airframes, which have the potential to be restored to fly again sometime.
Maybe at some stage in the future, someone will restore a wreck to static condition, and then arrange a swap with a museum somewhere, so that the potential flyer can be released for restoration. This way, the museum still ends up with a static airframe, and the warbird community might get another flying aircraft. It'd be interesting to see if any museums would actually be interested in such a proposal though.
To further what Richard said about the good condition of forgings and steel bits, I have seen the tail of the Firefly that he mentioned, and the steel work in that did indeed seem to be in surprisingly good condition.

Cheers,
Matt

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