WWII Combat Veteran Messerschmitt Bf-109F-4 Offered for Auction by Liveauctioneers - Vintage Aviation News WWII Combat Veteran Messerschmitt Bf-109F-4 Offered for Auction by Liveauctioneers - Vintage Aviation News
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That kind of stretches the definition of the word āintactāā¦ 
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Color me amazed. Off to buy lotto tickets! 
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I like āa repairable 10cm hole in the blockāā¦
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probably just a couple of weeks of full-time workā¦.
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All true, guys.
I suppose by āintactā they mean relative to some collections of metal used to recreate a displayable warbird. IIRC, that airworthy Ki-43 rebuild in Casa Grande (by Goshawk?) was little more than a collection of corroded aluminum, and then thereās the case of Glacier Girl. In the peculiarities of aircraft existence, the data plate is the aircraft. Sorta like I die and only a tooth with a filling is left, and you use the tooth as the cornerstone (cornerbone???) to reconstruct me with bones from many other sources and find a necromancer to reanimate me - so long as you include my tooth, the new creature is me.
Itāll buff right out.
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Who is the vendor? Vlad the impaler?
$20 million draw this Saturday night in Australia,but even if I won would probably stick to kits .
As flying restorations go, this is a find. Notice how much rust/corrosion there is? Almost none. That bodes well for the metal under the aircrafts skin. Notice the bent metal from the crash? Almost none. This is in great shape. You still have to take it apart and clean, strip and refurbish everything to get it recertified, but it looks like most everything is there in reasonable shape. I am assuming it eventually fell through the ice on the river/lake to settle into the mud on the river bottom.
I see it about like this barn find.
Restoration will not be cheap, but the bones are there to make it work. Notice the drag marks from the barn? It was literally dragged out of the barn.
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If we all kick in 10.00ā¦ Everyone can keep it at their house for 7 days. Long enough for the neighbors to complain for the Homeowner association!
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Ha! I live in Tennessee in a community without an HOA! And my yard proves it! (Like Iāve said about my belly since hitting 45 -= IāM WORKING ON IT!!!)
Itās just a flesh wound.
Most people do not realize how small a109 actually is. Last summer I was at an airshow that had one and it was parked by a mustang. Mustangs were small compared to P 47ās and the like. My friend and I thought the 109 was a 3/4 scale reproduction because of how small it was. It made the mustang look large. Standing next to the 109ās tail, we were taller than the top of the rudder and you could see into the cockpit while standing on the ground.
The disparity in size between what we think an aircraft is and what it really is can be significant. Iād gone to a āWings over Gillespieā air show where they had the Collings Foundation B-17 (then painted as āNine-O-Nineā, IIRC), and it was much smaller than Iād always pictured B-17s in my mind. When I got to climb inside, I was further struck by how much movies like ā12 OāClock Highā misrepresented how much room the interiors had; thinking about it, it was reasonable that the plane wouldnāt be any bigger than was necessary to hold the bomb load, crew, and equipment. And from bits from Martin Caidinās Flying Forts where he mentions the height of some of the aircrews, taller than me ā Iām 6ā5ā, and I had trouble moving around some places in the plane ā and imagining being shoehorned into the bird for a mission to Berlin and backā¦ urrrgh.
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You got that right. In 2013 Collins foundation B-17 and b-24 visited the airport. I walked through the Bombay and had a friend of mine photograph me in it. I was standing on that tiny little footpath between the bomb racks. I was relaxed. My shoulders are wider than the walkway. I was thinking about our guys in there heated leather flying suits, caring along a portable oxygen bottle, and whatever else they had.
I also took a photo inside a B-17 in the crawlway between the cockpit and the nose compartment. I could not fit in that, either. I was about 230 lb. I have a fat belly but Iām not broad.
I remember a news reel film from Korea of some portly colonel climbing out of the cockpit of an A26, he reminded me of a butterfly trying to escape its cocoon. No chance to bail out for that guy.
A little Tamiya Extra thin, and a couple tubes of Vallejo Perfect puttyā¦..and it will be good to go.