B17 crash

The_Chieftain: The argument is that there aren't quite as many B-17s as there are, say, 737s or 172s, and they are more likely to survive for the ages if in a hangar properly equipped with fire suppression and so on. I'm not entirely a believer in this argument, they were not made to sit around in a hangar gathering dust, and as long as we have both airworthy and non-airworthy aircraft, I think they should continue to be flown. There will come a point, however, that the aircraft are so rare that the argument for doing everything possible for preservation starts to meet up with the argument for flying them.