Leon - you said
Let's look at the Vulcan as an example. If so many people hadn't have sent huge amounts of cash to VTTS then would we have seen funding for Just Jane's return to flight? Or the Typhoon undergoing long term rebuild struggling for funds, or the Beaufighter that has struggled for years to find funding? Would we have seen a full set of flying repkicas for Stow Maries or the return to flight of the Vickers Vimy at Brooklands (that has also struggled for funds to sort out its Belllman Hangar).
I’ve tried to keep out of this discussion, Leon, but really, that is such utter cobblers.
Vulcan didn’t succeed at the expense of all those other worthwhile projects. It succeeded because of an amazing fund-raising organisation that managed to get people to contribute more than £23million because they wanted to. There is nothing to suggest that, without a similar campaign, any of your projects would have succeeded. The nearest comparison is Sally B - and her survival has taken the lifetime’s work of one extraordinary woman. Where are the people like Elly Sallingboe, or VTTS, for the projects you mention?
Speaking personally, there’s nothing I’d love to see more than a Beaufighter flying. My father died in one over the Mediterranean when I was eleven months old.
Equally, I’m extremely fond of the Vimy - I flew with it (and occasionally in it) down to Australia in the 1990s. I suppose it's just possible that both of those will fly again - but only if some groups of people get together and persuade millions of people to give, and keep giving, for those projects. The way VTTS did, so brilliantly, and the way Elly continues to do, equally brilliantly.
airsound
(Vulcan commentator, in case you’re wondering about bias….)
PS Sorry about the thread-drift