Wow, very cool.
EDIT: The history behind that bomber type had really slipped my mind, but the small blurb in the news article about the history behind this bomber blew my mind.
So VERY wow! From a historical standpoint, this is an absolute treasure; one of the German's mainstay bombers during the Battle of Britain was the Do-17; according to Wikipedia, the design suffered from a lack of range and carrying capacity - a similar affliction that seriously hampered Germany's main fighter, the (at that time known as) Messerschmidt, or Me-109.
Finding one of these aircraft is quite good fortune - the last of them were scrapped in 1952 - not only because of their rarity, but because of this particular aircraft's history; this particular aircraft was damaged during one of the
actual battles.
The reason for this type's rarity is that it is one of the last of the very early aircraft of the war - one of the original aircraft types that carried Germany through the Blitzkrieg. The relatively light payload capacity and short range of this bomber worked fine in the "close quarters" of the continent, but once the ranges began to reach to Britain and beyond, it could not keep up with newer designs.
A similar affliction affected the Me-109, though the type proved to be more expandable; there is a photo of a 109 ditched on a British beach, almost completely intact, the caption reading that the aircraft had run out of fuel (evidence I imagine was gained either by asking the pilot or checking the fuel tank). I imagine the pilot was at some level faced with the rather grim choice of most likely drowning at sea, or surrendering to the mercy of the people he had helped in trying to bomb.
