Commemorative Air Force
Non-profit organizationWikipedia
38
MENTIONS
16
EPISODES
6
PODCASTS
Search complete. 38 mentions across 16 episodes found for "Commemorative Air Force".
Sep 9, 2026
TowerHOST
The warbird community in the United States is something genuinely special.
TowerHOST
The Commemorative Air Force, the EAA Warbird Division, the individual owners, restoration specialists, and maintenance shops scattered across the country who have dedicated serious money and years of their lives to keeping original aircraft flying.
TowerHOST
These people are performing a form of living history that no museum collection, however well curated, can fully replicate.
TowerHOST
When a genuine P-51D makes a low pass at Oshkosh and the Merlin unwinds at full power, that is not nostalgia as entertainment.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Boeing historical archives, wartime maintenance manuals, some of them classified once and declassified long after the men who wrote them were gone.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Commemorative Air Force, whose B-29 FIFI had been flying since the 1970s, and whose crew chief community held institutional knowledge that existed nowhere in any written document.
Tail DraggerHOST
The two teams shared information, freely, shared expertise, and occasionally shared parts when one organization had a spare the other needed.
Tail DraggerHOST
Two organizations keeping the last two airworthy examples of the most complex piston bomber ever built in the air, doing it by cooperating with each other across decades.
Steve BussHOST
We always appreciate your questions and continued support of WarbirdTube.
Steve BussHOST
The commemorative Air Force is dedicated to education, inspiration, and honoring through flight and living history experiences.
Steve BussHOST
If you'd like to learn more about CAF, To find an air show or a unit near you, just visit our webpage, commemorativeairforce.org. And as always, if you have any ideas for a show that you'd like to have us cover in the future or a story from World War II or military aviation that you think should be shared, just drop us a line at media at cifhq.org. And remember, you can always watch previous episodes and enjoy more great CIF programming by subscribing to CIF Media TV on YouTube.
Steve BussHOST
Click the subscribe button and turn on the notifications bell so you know when our new programs are posted.
Steve BussHOST
So until next time, for the entire crew here from WarbirdTube, I'm Steve Buss.
Steve BussHOST
Have a good night.
speaker_2NARRATOR
CAF Warbird Tube is produced by the Commemorative Air Force and hosted by Steve Buss.
speaker_2NARRATOR
The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Commemorative Air Force.
Tail DraggerHOST
She is one of only two airworthy B-29s in the world.
Tail DraggerHOST
FIFI, operated by the Commemorative Air Force, has been flying for decades and has given generations of people their first experience of what a superfortress sounds like overhead.
Tail DraggerHOST
And now Doc flies beside her.
Tail DraggerHOST
Two airworthy B-29s in the American sky, the sound of that era is not gone.
Tail DraggerHOST
They can follow an airframe through decades of ownership changes by chasing the serial number through records that most people would consider impossibly obscure.
Tail DraggerHOST
A research team working with the Commemorative Air Force traced exactly that thread.
Tail DraggerHOST
They found the aircraft in Memphis, Tennessee, in the hands of an aircraft broker stored and available for sale.
Tail DraggerHOST
The airframe was intact.
Tail DraggerHOST
And that serial number when run through the wartime records came back as that's all, brother.
Tail DraggerHOST
the lead ship, the tip of the Neptune formation, sitting in a broker's lot in Tennessee waiting for someone to figure out what she was.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Commemorative Air Force figured it out.
Tail DraggerHOST
Now, if you're not familiar with the Commemorative Air Force, here is who they are.
Tail DraggerHOST
Out of nearly 4,000 built one was flying.
Tail DraggerHOST
One Fifi operated by the Commemorative Air Force out of Midland, Texas.
Tail DraggerHOST
Fifi is a magnificent airplane and the Commemorative Air Force does work that matters.
Tail DraggerHOST
But one threat is fragile.
Tail DraggerHOST
Doc was sitting at China Lake going nowhere.
Carl BestGUEST
Would you bring a T6? And I said, certainly.
Carl BestGUEST
So this is a nice commemorative Air Force connection.
Carl BestGUEST
The gentleman that owned the Harvard that I brought down was Gary Levitz, who we all miss dearly.
Carl BestGUEST
But Gary said, yeah, go ahead and bring the Harvard down.
52 MINS LATER
Steve BussHOST
And thanks to everyone in the viewing audience.
Steve BussHOST
We appreciate you being here and appreciate your support of Warbird 2.
Steve BussHOST
This program is made possible by the Commemorative Air Force.
Steve BussHOST
If you'd like to learn more about CAF, our aircraft, air shows, a unit near you, or how you can become a member, just visit us at commemorativeairforce.org. And as always, if you have an idea for a future show or a story that you think would be of interest to our audience, just drop us a line at media at cafhq.org. As always, you can watch previous episodes of WarbirdTube On Demand by subscribing to the CAF Media TV channel on YouTube, and make sure you click that bell icon so that you can get notifications when our new videos are posted.
Matt McCauleyGUEST
And, you know, so we had a sense of what was out there.
Matt McCauleyGUEST
As I recall at that time, the only flying hell diver was a Dash 5 operated by a wing of the Confederate Air Force.
Matt McCauleyGUEST
Correct.
Matt McCauleyGUEST
that, as I recall, had a mishap like a year or so later, and for a period there were none flying.
David CorsonHOST
My dad and Gary Levitz were partners in a B-25.
David CorsonHOST
They were in the Confederate Air Force.
David CorsonHOST
Anyway, we had their line.
David CorsonHOST
So after I got out of the University of Denver and I didn't make the NHL – Did my retail training there.
Tail DraggerHOST
The restoration community in this country is doing extraordinary work.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Commemorative Air Force has been at it for decades, the Experimental Aircraft Association and its member chapters, the big institutional museums, private collectors who pour fortunes and years into single aircraft because they believe the history is worth it.
Tail DraggerHOST
But they can't save everything, and the decisions about what gets saved are sometimes made not by historians, but by economics and publicity and the luck of whether somebody important took an interest.
Tail DraggerHOST
The Memphis Belle got saved, and we should be glad she did.
6 more episodes mention Commemorative Air Force.
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