Who has the largest airplane collections in the world? Movie maker Peter Jackson, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, oil man Oilman Rod Lewis and oil heir Kermit Weeks

Paul Allen, the Microsoft multibillionaire, keeps his Flying Heritage Collection – more than 20 vintage World War II fighter planes, all in working condition at Paine Field, a former US Air Force base outside Seattle.

When it comes to World War II fighters, no collection is as comprehensive as Allen’s, which encompasses planes from all the war’s principal combatants, including Germany, Japan and Russia.

Peter Jackson has amassed more than 40 flyable World War I warbirds at Hood Aerodrome, near Masterton, New Zealand

Allen and Jackson are sons of World War II veterans and have spoken of a lifelong fascination with vintage warplanes kindled in childhood.

Allen has tried to collect a real version of every model plane he built as a kid, while Jackson’s passion for old warplanes extends to his filmmaking.

In 2008, he wrote and directed a World War I short called Crossing the Line and has spoken about wanting to remake both The Blue Max, a 1966 film about World War I aviators, and 1955’s The Dam Busters, about daring World War II raids on German dams using ingenious bouncing bombs.

The vintage-aircraft market was once divided between individual pilots and aviation museums, but now a new breed of collector are buying, restoring and flying a National Air and Space Museum’s worth of vintage planes.

Oilman Rod Lewis has World War II warbirds in his Lewis Air Legends collection in San Antonio, Texas.

Oil heir Kermit Weeks claims more than 100 vintage aircraft at his Fantasy of Flight collection in Polk City, Florida.

http://www.modelairplane.com/2584/peter-jackson-dogfighting-over-vintage-warbirds