Excerpt from AOPA Pilot Magazine
Story by Dave Hirshman dave.hirschman@aopa.org
Hang around aircraft restorers and you’ll inevitably hear tales of priceless historical relics hidden in barns, buried in shrink wrap, or otherwise stuck in time awaiting discovery.
These stories are almost always wild exaggerations or outright fiction. But if you’ve ever heard of the cache of iconic warbirds at Wilson Connell “Connie” Edwards’ west Texas ranch, it’s absolutely real.
The irascible former movie pilot who made a fortune in the oil business has added to his vast inventory of mostly World War II-era fighters, seaplanes, and surplus parts for more than a half century. Now, he’s decided to sell many of them—but only on his own nonnegotiable terms.
“People can either pay my price or go to hell, I really don’t care which,” says Edwards, 80, who is perhaps best known for choreographing and flying many of the aerial scenes in Battle of Britain, a 1969 movie that starred Michael Caine and Sir Lawrence Olivier and featured more than a dozen Messerschmitt Bf 109s (technically Spanish-built HA-1112 Buchons), Heinkel He 111 (CASA 2.111) bombers—and, of course, British Spitfires and Hurricanes. “I know the value of what I’ve got, and I don’t haggle. Pay my price, or don’t waste my time,” Edwards says.
A Spitfire that actually flew in the real Battle of Britain is the jewel of Edwards’ fleet, as well as a half-dozen Buchons (including a rare two-seat model) that he took in partial payment for his work on the film. There’s also a P-51 Mustang that looks exactly as it did when imported from Guatemala in the early 1970s, and two PBY Catalinas. Edwards flew one of the PBYs to England and back in 1986, and a second—known as the Green Turtle—has a Calypso paint scheme and plush yacht-like interior. (There are also two shipping containers full of surplus PBY parts and specialized tools.)
A recently polished Grumman Mallard is tied down outside. So are several Piaggio Gull airframes, and parts for many more.
The impetus for the sale is the tragic 2013 death of Edwards’ son Wilson Connell “Tex” Edwards Jr., an accomplished warbird and agricultural pilot. Tex was killed in a car accident near the family’s ranch about 60 miles east of Midland/Odessa. He’s buried in a family plot on the ranch, which is located in the arid, cotton-growing portion of the state.
“I was going to give it all to Tex,” Edwards says. “He was a fantastic pilot and absolutely excelled at everything he did in aviation. But now that he’s gone, there’s no sense keeping it.”
In the 1980s Edwards donated two highly coveted aircraft to the Experimental Aviation Association—a P-38 Lightning and an F-4U Corsair—and both are on display at the EAA museum in Oshkosh. He also helped found the Commemorative Air Force (then the Confederate Air Force) but has had a bitter split with the Texas-based organization. He has been an AOPA member for more than 50 years.
Edwards says he doesn’t regard his many airplanes as a “collection,” just unrelated objects he bought or traded for because they interested him. Logistically, the ongoing acquisitions required building an ever-expanding hangar complex (more than 100,000 square feet) in which to store them. He’s never offered public tours, and his out-of-the-way runway, hangars, and castle-themed home are strictly private.
“I’m not interested in hearing other pilots’ war stories or telling them mine,” says Edwards, who soloed when he was 16 years old and later flew throughout Central America and the Caribbean in his twenties for a series of shadowy firms he prefers not to discuss. “I’m really not in the airplane business at all. I’m in the oil, ranching, and stone business. I only own airplanes for fun.”
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