About 200 years ago one of the leaders of the revolution that ended in the formation of the modern Greek state was asked about what went through their mind when starting it.
These guys were for the most part uneducated guerillas, with a few notable exceptions (eg one of them had served as an officer in the British army with units stationed in Corfu and that was about it), but they posessed some kind of folk wisdom and he managed to put it very accurately.
"When we started the revolution, we didn't know if we would manage to win. All we knew was that we felt the need to do it. It's like when a ship's captain decides to leave port with bad weather and sets sail into the storm. If he makes it and manages to make a delivery when all the other ships are moored, he can command a higher price for his goods and people will praise him for his seamanship, his skill, his daring and the fortunes he has made. If he doesn't make it and the ship sinks, then the same people will call the same captain an unskilled amateur who should have known better than to drown his sailors for no reason".
I don't know how good or bad the salvage team for this B29 was, but i think Thunderbolt has a point. They didn't pick up the Battle of Britain memorial flight Lancaster for a joyride and smashed it, depriving everyone of the joy of seeing it again. They picked up a plane nobody knew about or would dare salvage up to that point and through a combination of difficult circumstances and their own mistakes they failed. It's an inherent risk.
Maybe they wouldn't have crashed it if they were more careful, but that doesn't mean it would be parked in some museum. The most probable outcome if they really were careful would be that it would end up grounded there and then, this time in full exposure to the elements. Maybe they or someone else could have raised the money to fly it out of there after a few years, or maybe nobody would and it would rot, nobody can know for sure.
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