Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II

Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II | Carl Hoffman | A Rare Inside Look at Warbird Salvage

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Hunting Warbirds: ...

	Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II Carl Hoffman Ballantine Books, 2002 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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?Winged treasure? they call them?the lost remains of the great American fighter planes and bombers that won World War II. These warbirds are now worth literally anything?fortunes, families, even lives?to the people who search for them. . . .

The crash of the Kee Bird B-29 Superfortress made banner headlines in 1947 when a team of Air Force pilots pulled off the near-miraculous feat of locating the wreck in Greenland and snatching its stranded crew from the teeth of the arctic winter. For nearly half a century, the almost perfectly intact warbird lay abandoned on a lake of ice?but not forgotten. Fifty years later, with collectors paying upward of a million dollars for salvageable World War II planes, two intense fanatics, legendary test pilot Darryl Greenamyer and starry-eyed salvage wizard Gary Larkins, hatched the extraordinary idea of launching an expedition to Greenland to restore the Kee Bird, bring it back to life, and fly it out.

In this riveting adventure of man, machine, and history, Hoffman literally crisscrosses the country to track down the key players in the high-stakes warbird game. He meets a retired Midwestern carpenter who crammed every inch of his yard with now-precious warbirds during the lean years when they were considered junk; attends an air show where crowds go wild at the sight of four of the fourteen air-worthy B-17s flying in formation; speaks to pilots and mechanics, millionaire businessmen and penniless kids?all of them ready to drop everything in pursuit of these fabled planes.

In this superbly crafted narrative, Hoffman turns the warbird craze into the stuff of high drama and awesome adventure. Hunting Warbirds takes us to the heart of one of the most fascinating obsessions of our time.

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HUNTING WARBIRDS

I thought this a great book. It seems that a new generation of writers that often publish in the outdoors magazines like Backpacker or Outside are discovering the WW II eccentrics who are well known to us, their sons and nephews, as being the aviators and mechanics of the past who won the air war over Japan and Germany. As a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War, these men were our former mentors and role models. We went where we were sent and didn't question the duty or the reality of it all. Later, after finishing my tour in the Army, I flew the bush in Alaska, and this book reminded me of my early days on the North Slope, flying a Bell Jet Ranger with a seismic crew in the Colville River Delta. I was the furthest west chopper pilot during those spring months of 1969, and about the third youngest Army pilot to arrive on this edge of the Arctic Ocean. We flew around Prudhoe Bay and astonished many of the old bush pilots with our know-how and amount of flight time at such a young age. The B-29 story made me reminisce about those months up there, when anything could happen and did. Lot of fun and a lot of misery! Somehow, one has to go through these extremes in a swashbuckling manner to relate to these early aviation stories before GPS and much safe devices came about today. Good reading and a great young writer is Carl Hoffman.

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A Rare Inside Look at Warbird Salvage

"Hunting Warbirds" paints the picture of a world few of us have traveled. I'm not talking about the deserted, frozen shores of Greenland, but the inner sanctum of the realm of warbird salvage. Living here are wealthy collectors, skilled restorers and daring pilots, each with a unique perspective and inner driving force. It's a small world that those of who attend airshows and read "Air Classics" don't often get to see in detail. Hoffman walked in their ranks and absorbed enough of their passion to coherently relate it. He lived though the same privations and fed off the same energy that keeps those die-hard warbird salvors working 18 hours a day, seven days a week at a remote recovery site. For me, it was a rare view of a world I will never be privileged to experience. Some reviewers have criticized Hoffman for technical errors. I suppose they are valid critiques, but I really think they miss the point. The book is more about the people than the planes. Though you certainly can't separate the planes from the warbird fanatics, Hoffman gives us a sense of what makes those guys tick. I for one enjoyed the hell out of it. Given the look we get, only the most techno-pedantic could fail to forgive the author for a few errors. That said, I hold back one star because so much more could have been included. Instead of a wall mural, we got a small canvas. After ingesting "Hunting Warbirds" I hunger for more.

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Read the story...

I think this book was terriffic. Of course there are going to be some mistakes in the technical areas of the planes...the author never claimes to be an expert of every part of every plane that is covered...get over it. The book lets everyone have a small taste of a hobby (or addiction) that isn't available to eveyr person. I'd love to own a ME109, but can't. I like to read about the salvage and saving of these wonderful machines, and I think this book does a marvelous job of doing that. If you are reading to get a 110% account of airplane facts, buy a manual. If you want a story of a dying part of American history and culture, read this book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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