AAHS CEO Jerri Bergen traces the unusual path of a book collection back to its original shelves.

Chuck Wentworth, well known in the aviation industry through his Paso Robles, California, based Antique Aero, Inc. restoration company, is very familiar with the Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft series — the well-respected publication that has been identifying all known military and civil aircraft types since 1909. Chuck, who has been winning awards for his vintage aircraft restorations for the last 45 years, keeps a set of Jane’s in his main hangar at Paso Robles Airport. (Wentworth purchased the company from Jim and Zona Appleby, at Flabob Airport, before relocating it to Paso Robles in 1991.) We visited with Chuck during a stopover en route to the Ala Doble fly-in, September 27–28.

Always drawn to bookshelves, I wandered over to the hangar wall to check out Chuck’s book collection. (He doesn’t have enough AAHS Journals — we’ll need to fix that!) I commented on his healthy collection of Jane’s stashed there. He grinned and said, “Well, that’s a story!”

One volume becomes a complete set

It seems that Chuck, in 1996, had just one Jane’s. While working at the Antique Aero hangar, an old gentleman came to visit — as many people did — to admire the ongoing restoration of any number of vintage aircraft in Chuck’s shop. Standing in the office door, the stranger looked around and said, “You be interested in a set of Jane’s?” “Which ones?” Chuck asked, to which the gentleman gruffly replied, “I told you, I had a set!”

Chuck eventually made a date to see the old fellow’s collection, also nearby in Paso Robles. Indeed, there was a complete set of Jane’s from 1909 to 1974, and the gentleman offered it to Chuck for $6,000. (Today, just the first five editions of Jane’s, in good condition, could fetch up to $6,000.)

“You be interested in a set of Jane’s?” — the stranger in the office doorway, 1996

At the time, Chuck was knee-deep in the restoration of several of the late Javier Arango’s WWI fighter aeroplane collection, housed nearby in Paso Robles — including a Fokker, a 1914 Eindecker, and a Sopwith Camel, to name a few. Chuck gave the Jane’s collection to Arango for display among his WWI fighters, occasionally looking up some specification as reference for his own restoration work.

A roundabout journey home

Javier Arango was then on the board of directors of the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. One day in the early 2000s, Chuck got a call from Dr. Peter Jakab, a curator at the Smithsonian, who asked whether he was interested in books on World War I aviation. Chuck affirmed that, yes, he was still interested. In a few weeks, three pallets of books arrived from the Smithsonian — and Chuck found himself with an instant WWI book library, including the same Jane’s he’d given to Javier.

Chuck still gets a chuckle from thinking about the roundabout ownership of his Jane’s. “They’re mine now,” he states. Chuck can now look up his most recent restoration — a beautifully vintage plum-painted 1937 Waco ACG-7 that will be sure to win awards at the first fly-in he takes it to.