"Today, WWII aircraft are exceedingly rare and the rarer something is, of course, the more sought after it usually becomes. But scarceness alone doesn't explain why grown men cry when they hear the sound of a certain engine or why someone like me, a child of an entirely different generation with neither the money nor the inclination to collect rare airplanes should be moved by the sight and sound of one." HUNTING WARBIRDS is the first massmarket book of its kind to tell the behind-the-scenes story of the men who obsessively collect, salvage and restore vintage aircraft. It's a fascinating glimpse into the weird and wonderful world of the collector; a revival of the ghosts of airplanes once worshipped and an expose on the growing subculture of "warbird" fanatics. Part history, part travelogue, part adventure tale, Hunting Warbirds tells the story of the world's hottest and most improbable treasure. It is also one journalist's search to discover why the airplanes of WWII - efficient killing machines - inspire such passion in so many of us. Along the way, we meet men such as Walter Soplota, a Czech immigrant who hoards planes and parts in his backyard - a man so fearful of other collectors that he refuses to allow anyone to disclose the address of his junkyard/home and weeps when he relates the story of being forced to sell one of his "aircraft children" to avoid financial ruin! More importantly, there is the bizarre tale of the legendary Kee Bird, a downed B-29 bomber and the quest by a motley crew of fanatical collectors led by Greenamyer, a risk-taking pilot, to salvage it from its watery grave in Greenland where it had crashed 46 years earlier. A real-life hunt for winged treasure, Hunting Warbirds will captivate, entertain and surprise as it delves into the near pathological quest for a collector's high...