Flying with the guys who bring WW2 warbirds back to life... and giving WW2 aviators another flight in their planes.
Resurrecting Warbirds
A unique band of modern-day adventurers searches the world for downed WW2 aircraft so that they can breathe life back into them.
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Missing since the 1940’s, every plane is a treasure hunt. After digging up warbirds from deserts, lakes, glaciers, and swamps, they rebuild them in their own private hangars. And then they race them in the Reno Air Races.
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It’s about finding pieces of American history and bringing them back to life.
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Sometimes, it's about more than that. In one or two cases, where the pilots of the downed plane didn’t perish, the guys have found those pilots and brought them to the hangar, opened the doors, revealed their plane to them -- 70 years later -- and then taken them up for a flight. One WW2 veteran said “this was the last thing I had to do in life, go back up in my plane for one more ride." It completes a circle they didn’t realize needed completing.
Shunpiking
®
The adventure chronicle
Off the beaten path...
into the heart of things.
I tell American stories that sing the unsung, with a focus on the inspirational characters that might get left behind or forgotten by the mainstream.
In order to find them, I practice the lost art of Shunpiking — knowing when to “shun” the turnpike and get onto the back roads where the good stories are tucked away. The ones that remind us of our best selves.
America is a patchwork quilt, and stories are its stitching. In a divided age, we need unifying stories more than ever.
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