My question is about the decisions whether an airplane is allowed to park in the warbirds area or not.

Today, I flew my plane into Dulles/KIAD to participate in the National Air and Space Museum's "Innovations in Flight" day. I was parked next to a recently restored HU-16 Grumman Albatross, owned by "Seaplanes Crossing" an aviation history 501(3)c. It is a beautiful restoration and was quite popular with the visitors. I asked the PIC if he would be bringing it to OSH this year and if so where he would be parking it. He told me that he had asked to park it at Warbirds, but was refused because it was not panted in military colors! Instead, he will park it a Vintage -- and vintage has been very welcoming to him.

It seems to me that I have seen more than enough "warbirds" painted in civilian colors parked with the warbirds area. Of course there are also the airplanes where, although that airframe was never in military service, there were models strongly similar to it that were in military service and are allowed in if that aircraft is painted with a military appearing paint scheme (E.g., Navions of different model years.) I am pretty sure last year I saw a couple of planes where the airplane was in civilian colors, but since airplanes of that type served in some foreign country's military, there were allowed in too. (E.g., IAR's)

Given that liberality, I wonder why the operators of this particular HU-16 were told that the plane could not park in Warbirds unless it had a military paint scheme. (I am sure the crew will have a great time with the Vintage folks.)