Sorry Yerger, but you're dead wrong.
Many of the war replicas and warbirds you see are flown by highly experienced pilots, many of them have military backgrounds. For certain recips and jet warbirds you need a "type" rating specific for the aircraft, so there's a lot more training that goes into acquiring one of these ratings. BTW the Hughes H1 that crashed a few years ago was the result of a propeller that came apart when the pilot was flying it back from Oshkosh.
As you say "recreation pilots," I could assure you that the lowest time pilots you might find say flying a T-6 might have 500 hours, so for the most part most of the pilots who fly these warbirds are far from "recreation" pilots. Sometimes many of these warbird owners have more money than brains and crash these aircraft by doing plain stupid things, but in the bigger picture many of these same guys have 1000s of hours and usually hold commercial, instrument, multi-engine and even ATP ratings.
Bottom line, it has nothing to do with skill, it has everyting to do with operating the aircraft safely.