Tom Huntington: Tinkering With History: Historic Aircraft, Winged Survivors
[Tom Huntington is the Senior Editor of American Heritage Magazine.]
...Two schools of thought exist as to the proper means of restoring an aircraft. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which preserves perhaps the world’s most impressive collection of historic aircraft, “does not restore its aircraft to flying status, because the steps required to make a plane airworthy often eradicate much of its value as an artifact,” says Malcolm Collum, the museum’s chief of conservation. A full-blown restoration to flyable condition, he says, requires replacing original parts with flight-worthy components. “Every time you do that you are reducing the percentage of that airplane that you can define as authentic,” says Collum, and that approach doesn’t suit the Smithsonian’s philosophy of treating each aircraft as a “historic document.”...
At other institutions the goal is to get their airplanes into the air. The Planes of Fame in Chino, California, has around 30 flyable airplanes, and it plans to have its YP-59A Airacomet, America’s first operational jet, flying again before long. In Bethel, Pennsylvania, Paul Dougherty Jr. owns and operates the Golden Age Air Museum with a small flotilla of flyable airplanes. “If they don’t fly, they don’t earn their keep,” he says, standing in a hangar surrounded by machines he has restored to flying status. “If it’s got wings on it, it flies.” That is what airplanes have been doing for slightly more than a century now, ever since Orville Wright lifted off the ground for just under the length of a Constellation’s wingspan.
On the following pages are the stories of five vintage aircraft and the people who lovingly restored them, each tale representing an important segment of our collective technological past, artifacts of the innovation and dedication that built the U.S. air industry. Attached to each story is information about how to visit the aircraft and see it, touch it, perhaps fly in it. Go see them—and talk with the enthusiasts who have put them back together. There is no better gateway to understanding our technological past than to examine the machines themselves....
YP-59A Airacomet: Will America’s first jet fly again?
When it lifts off the runway in the not too distant future, the YP-59A Airacomet at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California, will become the world’s oldest flying jet. Maybe that will help the airplane earn a little respect. The P-59A may have been America’s first operational jet but it wasn’t a particularly good airplane....
Sixty-four-year-old John Benjamin had been assisting the museum with a flying-wing restoration in Los Angeles when Maloney asked for his help on the Airacomet. Benjamin recalls telling Maloney that he would do it on the condition that they find “three I-16 engines, two for the ship and a spare.” The museum had performed work on the fuselage, for instance removing a seat and nose canopy added for observers. “When I finally got out there,” recalls Benjamin, “it was a matter of gathering all the parts in one hangar, and we just went forward.”
As the head of a small executive search firm that deals mainly with aerospace companies, Benjamin used his networking skills to obtain parts and assistance. “I’m not a pilot,” he admits, “or a really great mechanic, but I’m good at being a program manager.” One company manufactured new wing spars; another fabricated a replacement exhaust tube; a third overhauled the landing gear. A firm in Jamestown, New York, manufactured brand-new shaft bearings for the engines, and another outfit in Burbank overhauled and tested them in 1992. “They ran great,” says Benjamin. “The only part that is different on the engines is the igniter system. We decided to replace the old, funky GE part with LearJet igniters.” For safety reasons, the restorers also installed a fire suppression system that the original airplane simply didn’t have.
“This airplane is simple,” says Benjamin of the restoration. “The hard part was getting good volunteers.” He singles out retired GE employee Bruce Ritchie. “I came up to him one day and said, ‘Bruce, we have to wire this airplane.’ And he said, ‘I’m not a wiring guy.’ I said, ‘Bruce, you do everything!’” Armed with a wiring schematic, Ritchie set to work, “and he wired the whole damn airplane.” When a pilot finally fires up the twin I-16 engines and takes the YP-59A aloft, he’ll be happy know that.
Read entire article at American Heritage
...Two schools of thought exist as to the proper means of restoring an aircraft. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which preserves perhaps the world’s most impressive collection of historic aircraft, “does not restore its aircraft to flying status, because the steps required to make a plane airworthy often eradicate much of its value as an artifact,” says Malcolm Collum, the museum’s chief of conservation. A full-blown restoration to flyable condition, he says, requires replacing original parts with flight-worthy components. “Every time you do that you are reducing the percentage of that airplane that you can define as authentic,” says Collum, and that approach doesn’t suit the Smithsonian’s philosophy of treating each aircraft as a “historic document.”...
At other institutions the goal is to get their airplanes into the air. The Planes of Fame in Chino, California, has around 30 flyable airplanes, and it plans to have its YP-59A Airacomet, America’s first operational jet, flying again before long. In Bethel, Pennsylvania, Paul Dougherty Jr. owns and operates the Golden Age Air Museum with a small flotilla of flyable airplanes. “If they don’t fly, they don’t earn their keep,” he says, standing in a hangar surrounded by machines he has restored to flying status. “If it’s got wings on it, it flies.” That is what airplanes have been doing for slightly more than a century now, ever since Orville Wright lifted off the ground for just under the length of a Constellation’s wingspan.
On the following pages are the stories of five vintage aircraft and the people who lovingly restored them, each tale representing an important segment of our collective technological past, artifacts of the innovation and dedication that built the U.S. air industry. Attached to each story is information about how to visit the aircraft and see it, touch it, perhaps fly in it. Go see them—and talk with the enthusiasts who have put them back together. There is no better gateway to understanding our technological past than to examine the machines themselves....
YP-59A Airacomet: Will America’s first jet fly again?
When it lifts off the runway in the not too distant future, the YP-59A Airacomet at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California, will become the world’s oldest flying jet. Maybe that will help the airplane earn a little respect. The P-59A may have been America’s first operational jet but it wasn’t a particularly good airplane....
Sixty-four-year-old John Benjamin had been assisting the museum with a flying-wing restoration in Los Angeles when Maloney asked for his help on the Airacomet. Benjamin recalls telling Maloney that he would do it on the condition that they find “three I-16 engines, two for the ship and a spare.” The museum had performed work on the fuselage, for instance removing a seat and nose canopy added for observers. “When I finally got out there,” recalls Benjamin, “it was a matter of gathering all the parts in one hangar, and we just went forward.”
As the head of a small executive search firm that deals mainly with aerospace companies, Benjamin used his networking skills to obtain parts and assistance. “I’m not a pilot,” he admits, “or a really great mechanic, but I’m good at being a program manager.” One company manufactured new wing spars; another fabricated a replacement exhaust tube; a third overhauled the landing gear. A firm in Jamestown, New York, manufactured brand-new shaft bearings for the engines, and another outfit in Burbank overhauled and tested them in 1992. “They ran great,” says Benjamin. “The only part that is different on the engines is the igniter system. We decided to replace the old, funky GE part with LearJet igniters.” For safety reasons, the restorers also installed a fire suppression system that the original airplane simply didn’t have.
“This airplane is simple,” says Benjamin of the restoration. “The hard part was getting good volunteers.” He singles out retired GE employee Bruce Ritchie. “I came up to him one day and said, ‘Bruce, we have to wire this airplane.’ And he said, ‘I’m not a wiring guy.’ I said, ‘Bruce, you do everything!’” Armed with a wiring schematic, Ritchie set to work, “and he wired the whole damn airplane.” When a pilot finally fires up the twin I-16 engines and takes the YP-59A aloft, he’ll be happy know that.