Saturday, May. 17, 2008

Restoring former glory: Skyhawk at Castle Air Museum

By GUY KEELER
The Fresno Bee

ATWATER -- Old planes "land" at the Castle Air Museum on a lot less than a wing and a prayer. They usually come in pieces, their once-proud bodies taken apart and carried in on trucks.

But the museum is a place where obsolete war birds -- even those that have been rotting in the sun for years -- can live again. All it takes is the patient, determined work of the museum's team of restoration volunteers.

The 35 volunteers, many of whom were stationed at Castle Air Force Base before it closed in 1995, are masters at turning junk into aviation jewels. Their most recent project, which took thousands of hours over 18 months, is the restoration of a Navy A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft that saw service during the Vietnam War.

Although the plane will never fly again, next month it will become the 50th aircraft on display at the museum. A look at what it took to restore the plane offers insight into its history.

The Douglas Aircraft Corp. built 2,960 Skyhawks between 1954 and 1979, according to a Web site maintained by the Boeing Co., which merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

The A-4 was first used in combat during carrier-launched raids on North Vietnam on Aug. 4, 1964. Skyhawks also were used by Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and were part of the Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron 1974-86.

The Castle plane was built in the early 1960s as an A-4C, says Joe Pruzzo, the museum's executive director. (The first letter stands for the plane's mission, "Attack," the number represents the sequence within the mission, and the second letter represents updated or modified versions of the original model.)

The A-4C version of the plane was later converted into an A-4L, with added electronic systems housed in a so-called "camel's hump" behind the cockpit. As an A-4L, the plane was assigned to the River Rattlers Navy Reserve squadron based in Memphis, Tenn.

The restored A-4L bears the River Rattlers' rattlesnake logo and the name of its last pilot, Cmdr. N. J. Flagler, who now lives in Lake Sherwood, Mo.

"As an A-4C, the plane made two cruises during the Vietnam War," says Ralph Robledo, who researched the bomber's history and led the restoration work.

During the Vietnam cruises, it flew missions from the aircraft carriers USS Midway, USS Coral Sea and the USS Ranger. The plane was retired from service in 1978 and was in storage at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla., when the Castle Air Museum arranged for its transport to Atwater in August 2006.

"We got it on indefinite loan," Pruzzo says. "The plane didn't cost us anything, but we had to pay to have it disassembled and shipped to California."

Pruzzo says with labor and shipping, plus the expense of replacement parts, the total restoration cost about $12,000.

"When it came in, it looked like another pile of junk," says Bill Hiller, manager of the museum's restoration program. The cockpit was gutted, the tires were shot and some key components, such as the center pylon for the plane's rocket pods, were missing.

"We got it into the hangar and went to work on it," Hiller says. "The first thing we did was put it together and get it up on its wheels."

Next, the workers compiled a list of everything that was missing, and museum curator Larry Birks sought replacement parts from the "boneyards" at other aviation museums.

"I got on the phone and started calling other museums," Birks says. "We wound up getting parts from six places from Florida and New York to Arizona and California."

What Birks couldn't find elsewhere the volunteers made themselves, including radar warning transmitters and receivers in the plane's nose and tail.

Russ Schaff, who restored the cockpit, says his biggest challenge was finding replacement gauges.

"Clocks are the hardest things to find," he says. "People remove them from old planes and take them home."

With the help of Birks, Schaff found replacements for everything that was missing in the A-4L's cockpit -- and got a little surprise in one package from Florida.

"The radar scope they sent us came with some seaweed and clamshells," he says. "We reupholstered the pilot's seat and replaced all the missing gauges. The cockpit is complete right down to blueprints."

Dave Prince has been restoring planes at the museum for 25 years. He helped install the A-4L's wings and landing gear.

"It's always a feeling of success when you get a plane up on its wheels and you can move it around," he says.

Retired Navy Capt. Jerry Palmer wasn't involved in restoring the Castle plane, but he flew A-4s for five years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including three cruises on aircraft carriers during the Vietnam War.

"The plane's main role was as an attack bomber," Palmer says. "We'd fly one or two missions every day."

The A-4 was 41 feet long and had a wingspan of 27½ feet. It could reach a top speed of 673 mph at sea level.

"It was like strapping on a Corvette," Palmer recalls. "There wasn't a lot of room in the cockpit. But it was very honest and maneuverable. It was a fun airplane to fly."

The A-4 also could be refueled in flight, a capability that proved vital when Palmer's plane was damaged by enemy fire during one mission.

"I took a hit, which left a hole in the wing," he says.

Although he lost the fuel in the damaged wing tank, Palmer was able to return to his carrier with the help of a tanker that supplied replacement fuel.

A total of 195 Skyhawks were shot down during the Vietnam War. In 1967, a pilot stationed at Lemoore Naval Air Station, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Estocin of Turtle Creek, Pa., was shot down after leading two attacks on surface-to-air missile sites under intense enemy fire. Estocin, whose body was never found, received the Medal of Honor in 1978.

A-4 pilots taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese included presidential hopeful and Arizona Sen. John S. McCain as well as the late James Stockdale, a Medal of Honor recipient who also was stationed at Lemoore and went on to be Ross Perot's running mate in the 1992 presidential election.