Anywhere which would have affected the planes flight characteristics, wings, vertical stabiliser, tailplane etc... would have required a perfect repair, yes?
I don't know that that's true. I'm not aware that the standards for an acceptable, legal repair vary according to the location on the aircraft. All parts of the airframe affect its flight characteristics. I'd like an opinion from someone who has actually repaired airplanes. Jeff Neville? How say ye?
A
common standard is that which meets original strength and stiffness ("or exceeds" is sometimes thrown in, but that's actually not what the standard says). So that is the general goal for a repair.
And Jeff Victor makes a good distinction where flight characteristics are concerned - one must use extra care where control surfaces and airfoils are concerned due to considerations of balance, flutter, buffet and resistance to bending (maintaining aero rigidity) etc.
Nothing in particular on 2-2-V-1 puts that out of the question, except some suggestion that more care to restore 'to original' would 'likely' be exercised if this were from a control surface, and I doubt we'd see so many odd-sized holes in that critical an area. A wing panel - especially the lower surface (which is the less critical to airfoil effectiveness) might well receive a slightly bastardized patch, installed with some minor license. Rivets would not be pitched further apart, but there could be reason to tighten a pattern (more rivets per square inch), even though it could be argued that adds toward "or exceeds" in terms of strength and rigidity.
I would not be surprised to find this as a somewhat inspired adaptation to lend relative smoothness and web strength back into a deformed are of belly skin - including perhaps a wing under-surface. Although the remaining rivet length may preclude the idea, I also still wonder about it having been a last-minute tidy-up of a wrinkled skin area that could have gone either way (removal, or straighten and leave in place with rivets replaced due to having been stressed), aka a 'scab' patch. Not a hugely popular approach - and perhaps not even likely, but possible.
It is pure speculation on my part, but part of that wonderment is the circumstances of the repair and the presence and fussiness of the airplane's owner - there seems to have been a conflict of available time and fairly high expectations. A wrinkled-but-straightened area might have been sound enough, but not pretty as it bore evidence of the mishap; there may have been little time to excise the offending area for replacement - but a reasonable cover might have been installed with little investment of time. The intent could have been a full replacement at a later date.
Like I said, speculation - and of the photos we have, the work I can make out looks well accomplished. I am also not talking about 'shoddy' here, just a slight improvising.
None of which explains fully the difference in pitch, nor line spacing, that we see - necessarily. Problem there is we don't really know for certain what NR16020 was really like in all areas, although museum birds give the best guess we can have for now.
Wherever it came from, it doesn't readily fit the warbirds I just saw - not only is the spacing of rows wrong, but the whole scheme of it screams 'lighter airframe' than anything I saw in Dayton.
One thing to remember - there are no 'perfect' repairs - by definition they tend to carry some notable, if minor mostly, deviations from original installations. Even new skins on a control surface have to deal with sub-structure that may be slightly altered in some ways, even an occasional over-sized fastener - but that should be kept to a minimum.
