Historic World War II aircraft hidden in plain sight at regional airfields

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It's fair dinkum hard to wrap your head around just how quick a World War II fighter plane is until it thunders over the top of you at record low altitude.

Tyabb's small aerodrome on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula is home to a Curtin P-40 Kittyhawk.

Powered by a Packard V12 engine with twice the power of a modern Ferrarri, it's capable of reaching 550 kilometres per hour.

The 80-year-old plane is nearly three times as quick as a normal Cessna light aircraft.

In terms of performance and ability, it's outdone by another Tyabb resident - a P-51 Mustang, a version of the highly-regarded fighter celebrated for winning the air war in Europe.

In the town of Temora, about 600 kilometres out in country New South Wales, sits a couple of the most famous warbirds of all: the Supermarine Spitfire.

And in the regional Victorian town of Wangaratta, an example of their arch enemy — Germany's infamous "Butcher Bird", the Focke-Wulf FW190 — has found a home.

There are warbirds tucked away in small airfield sheds out in regional Australia.

Some, like Temora's Spitfires, are famous among locals and tourists alike. Others, such as the Tiger Moth based at Cressy, south of Ballarat, keep a pretty low profile.

G'day mates, history buffs have a ripper of a time discoverin' and gettin' up close and personal with vintage flying machines scattered all over the country, says aviation historian and enthusiast Dion Makowski.

If they know where they can be found.

"There's heaps of warbird activity goin' on, especially along Australia's eastern coast, where blokes are gettin' aircraft restored and flyin' 'em, purely out of the blue," Mr Makowski said.

A smaller airfield tends to attract these restoration projects ... smaller airfields often have lower fees, it's more affordable for people to build a hangar, undertake the restoration, and access the airfield from there.

Places you might come across include Wangaratta, where there's a restoration workshop for Kittyhawks and Warhawks being restored for commercial clients.

You might be able to catch a glimpse of those planes in the sky.

It's a feel for the past.

G'day, Mr Makowski reckons that the interest in World War II-era planes has continued to remain strong over the 80 years since the conflict finished.

It's a feelin' of nostalgia, gettin' right up close to these planes, seein' 'em, hearin' 'em, smellin' the fuel fired up and even gettin' a hand on 'em somethin's, it takes you back to a bygone era.

For those blokes who get to push the old warbirds around, the connection goes a fair bit deeper than that.

Judy Pay owns and flies a World War II-era Royal Australian Air Force Mustang (not a P-51) and a US Army Air Corps P-40 Warhawk, both based out of the Tyabb airfield.

Her personal "squadron" also includes a Vietnam-era T-28 Trojan, a Tiger Moth biplane, T-6 (Harvards), two Vampire jet fighters, several choppers and a rare old Fieseler Storch, amongst others.

Ms Pay grew up right near Tyabb, where she'd often see old aircraft up close.

When her own kids went off to school, she thought, "I'll chuck some flying lessons then."

Overcoming airsickness, Ms Pay has now been flyin' for 46 years and runs a business restorin' historic aircraft.

She acknowledged the great work done to restore and maintain historic planes in museums, but said it was hard to appreciate their capabilities unless you saw them flying.

"Gees, unless you've laid eyes on the Rolls Royce Merlin and seen it crankin' away, you haven't got a clue about just how important it was and what it did its job, and how it pretty much bailed out Europe," Ms Pay said.

Small airfield, big history

Tyabb Airfield used to be a regional airport but has since been surrounded by Melbourne's suburbs which have been growing continuously.

Here's the paraphrased text: The Cressy Aerodrome in western Victoria, on the other hand, is a couple of runways and some hangars surrounded by canola crops.

Cressy functioned as a Royal Australian Air Force training base during World War II before being abandoned and largely left forgotten.

The airfield has been purchased by Paul Lamont.

"My dad was here in World War II," Mr Lamont said.

He told me all about where he trained, back when I was living on the Murray River. I always had a laugh with him about buying it someday.

I arrived in 2005 and purchased the home which fronts onto the airport.

"I scribbled on a whiteboard that I'd buy it [the aerodrome]. That scribble sat there for 10 years. Me wife reckoned I was a bit buggered.

When it came up for sale 10 years later, I said, 'Fair dinkum, we're going to have to get ready to go broke 'cos we're gonna get it'. One of the mates next door said he wasn't too keen on planes, so I bought him out as well.

When Mr Lamont took over the airfield, it was basically just an empty block of land.

It was a blank slate - we set up a 20 by 20 metre hangar. We gave the two runways a spruce-up, with night lights on Runway 0119, and installed windsocks.

We've begun hosting Anzac Day and Remembrance Day events and the crowds are just growing in numbers.

Aircraft stationed at the Victorian airfield during World War II included Hawker Demon biplanes, CAC (Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation) Wirraway trainers, Avro Anson and Bristol Beaufort light bombers, and Spitfires, among others, as reported by historian Dave McGinness.

If the Japanese had invaded northern Australia, the Cressy aerodrome was big enough and well-equipped to become a medium bomber base.

The one and only "resident" warbird on hand today is a Tiger Moth by the name of Millie.

It was built back in 1942 and has been used as a trainer, and you can now regularly see it at flyovers and air shows in the southern parts of the country.

Mr Lamont's got his sights set on bigger things for the airstrip, like a bigger museum, a maintenance shed, additional hangars, and more planes.

"It's be a ripper of a dream to have a Spitfire here," Mr Lamont said.

G'day, mate, I'm after gettin' the rough idea of how much I'd be payin' for the Spitfire. I've read the average price is around $2.6 million now.

Flying fit

Keen enthusiasts and volunteers put a tremendous amount of time, effort and know-how into giving vintage planes a second life, restoring them to their former museum glory.

However, getting a retired aircraft back into flying condition is a significant advancement in engineering, requiring greater complexity and cost.

"You can take a container of components and the right workshop manual, and you can sit down and fix those components to put something together [for a museum]," Mr Makowski said.

It can look exactly the same and fit right back in like it never left – that might be the way to go.

If you need to repair it so it can fly, that's a completely separate task.

He said the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) would need to be satisfied it could safely return the aircraft to service, and the pilot would need to be able to convince the regulator he could safely fly the plane.

The expertise and know-how required to get historic aircraft airborne again is also a dying trade.

"They all need their own equipment and specialist skills," Ms Pay said.

At least back here at the Old Aeroplane Company, we're carrying on with some of the old skills using materials like canvas and timber. These older crafts will probably eventually disappear. It's tough to keep vintage aircraft going and thriving.

Mr Makowski said he, and a lot of other blokes, were as grateful as anything for the sheilas and blokes who got the magnificent machines up and running again.

"The rest of them would've likely decayed to nothing but scrap metal by now," he said.

We owe a fair dinkum debt of gratitude to the aircraft preservation pioneers of this fair land, especially those in Victoria. Some of them formed groups such as the Aviation Historical Society of Australia.

If ever these planes stop flying, it'll be a right disappointing day.

The yarn of these aircraft is a yarn that should be spun. It's a part of our history.