Gotta love the CAF. It must cost a ridiculous amount of time and money to keep those wonderful old birds flying.
Spelling duly noted ! …
Here in the Dallas area, we have a -24, -17 and a -25 - don’t know if their CAF or Collings - come in every year to the Addison Airport, home of a great flyable Warbird Museum … makes for an exciting weekend seeing them, plus any number of Mustangs, Corsairs, Texans and assorted other warbirds crusin’ over my house … I always make a trip to the airport as you can park within 100’ of the end of the main runway and get some fabulous stills and video …
Love the sound of those Merlins and the roundy round engines …
Never have taken a ride - too rich for my blood - but would love to do so … have had rides in P-51’s though, way back when …
pepper
Pepper-
Sounds like the Collings Foundation trio. Hans posted a picture above.
According to their website, the Collings Foundation B-24J, B-25J, and B-17G are all based at New Smyma Beach, FL, along with their A-36, TP-51C, and Me 262 .
The CAF has several units in general DFW area, but the B-17s are based in Houston (Texas Raiders) and Mesa, AZ (Sentimental Journey)… The B-29/B-24 Sqn HQ is in the Dallas area, as well as the Corsair Sponsor Group, plus the Ranger Wing in Waco has their A-26 there…
Just a quick thanks to all the great folks who responded to my post. Sorry I dodn’t get back to you all sooner, I had some health issues.
Don’t forget Hawkins & Powers, they had several PB4Y-2’s flying as air tankers for decades. Not sure when they started using them, but sometime in the 70s and they kept them flying until 2002 when an accident grounded them. At one time I think they were flying 5 or 6 of them (Tanker 121-126). They must have saved dozens of warbirds from the scrap heap over the years, P2V Neptunes, A26 Invaders, C119s, KC97s were all used for a time and many ended up on the auction block when the company closed in 2005.