Ron, I love watching any vintage aircraft fly and I’m not an alarmist by any means. But the reality is we are slowly losing these awesome aircraft.
The engineer in me asks who deals with the aging aircraft issues for these types? Given the training and combat loses during WWII I doubt service life was much of a design consideration.
For example, it took a T-34 to break apart in flight at a air combat simulation operation with a couple of fatalities to highlight spar issues. Military aircraft cycle thru depot inspections and have engineering support to address such issues. The Navy cycled it’s P-3’s thru service life extension programs to replace out wings and horizontal tails. Remember the C-130A fire tanker that broke apart in flight; Lockheed had informed the operator about issues with the center wing section. The operated chose to ignore and we know how that ended. While I’m sure owners may crosstalk amongst themselves, is there anyone out there performing that function?
The time will come when these aircraft are considered too old or rare, or the regulatory burden becomes too prohibitive. Just may not be in our life time.