Billionaire Allen opens plane collection to public

By Daisuke Wakabayashi

SEATTLE (Reuters) - A rare collection of vintage World War Two airplanes from five different countries, owned by billionaire and Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen, will be opened to the public at a new museum.

The Flying Heritage Collection provides access to 15 planes that comprised most of the significant fighter aircraft of five World War Two participants: Germany, Russia, Japan, Britain and the United States.

The museum opens on Friday, 64 years after D-Day, the start of the Allied forces' invasion of Normandy, at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, 25 miles north of Seattle.

Allen, whose father was in the second wave of U.S. soldiers to land on Omaha Beach during the invasion, has bought the planes during the past decade and restored most to flyable condition using original parts and materials.

"If you are into planes, these are the crown jewels," said Adrian Hunt, executive director of the Flying Heritage Collection. "They're priceless."

The collection includes a one-of-a-kind Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-13 Dora, an advanced propeller plane that the Germans introduced near the end of the war, and Germany's Messerschmitt 163B Komet, the world's first rocket-powered plane.

There is also a North American P-51D Mustang, the U.S. fighter plane credited with winning the air war in Europe, and Japan's Mitsubishi A6M3-22 Zero-Sen, considered the world's first strategic fighter plane.

Allen, who started Microsoft in 1975 with childhood friend Bill Gates, said he first became interested in World War Two planes when he made model airplanes as a child and then grew to appreciate the great aviation advances of the era.

"There seemed to be an explosion of technology and progress during that period," said Allen in a video on exhibit at the museum.

The exhibit spans from older wood-and-cloth planes like the Polikarpov U-2/PO-2, an open cockpit craft flown by female Soviet pilots who made nighttime raids against the Germans, to the breakthrough Komet plane that used rocket technology, which would become the foundation for the U.S. space program.

Most of the planes are regularly flown including the British Supermarine Spitfire Mk. Vc. All the planes have been restored to their original colors and designs.

Allen, who was ranked by Forbes as the 41st richest man in the world in 2008 with an estimated net worth of $16 billion, has also started a music museum in Seattle that features the guitar that Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock.

The reclusive billionaire also funded SpaceShipOne, a plane that completed the first privately funded human spaceflight.

(Editing by Bill Trott)