Only known surviving Dornier 17 to be raised from the English Channel

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

But then your second thought was, 'Many aircraft here in the states have been restored from much of nothing left that resembled the aircraft when it was recovered.'

I understood what he meant, thank you very much.

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Can you point me to those? For the life of me, I do not believe 1000's spent to restore a P-40 it would look like a Sopwith Camel when completed.

Every time you restore an aircraft, you make choices like that. Sometimes it sparks an outrage, like the rumor of BW-372 getting painted in Navy colors in which it never served. Sometimes it's more subtle like removing the red star from a P-39 that saw use in Russia. And on everyday case it's covering the marks that make the object an individual object and thus a museum piece.

Take this plane, for example. It's a plane which by the looks of it was shot down. It's a question of if it's going to be treated as such, or made a generic Dornier 17 to represent all Dornier 17s. As the article says "the propellers clearly show the damage inflicted during the bomber's fateful final landing, experts have said". Are they going to repair that damage? How about any marks of the battle that took place before the plane's fate?

This plane has a story. By restoring it they can either honor it or ignore it. I hope they go with the former, because as an object without a story it would be not much more than a lawn ornament.