A-4 Skyhawk To Get Beauty Treatment

A partnership between the Millville Army Air Field Museum and the New Jersey Academy of Aviation Science will allow an A-4 Skyhawk aircraft, which flew in Vietnam, to be restored for public display. "The plane is on loan from the Navy," said museum director Guy Robbins. "Unlike the Army, the Navy only loans the aircraft and you have to fill out a report once a year to tell them what you are doing with it." The museum obtained this plane in the 1990s, Robbins said.

Because the Navy opted to keep its engine, the fighter will remain on static display. The museum team found out the A-4 was previously used by the Navy's Blue Angels, leaving the blue/yellow paint scheme as a decorative choice for the museum. While having an A-4 is a treat for any museum, it does comes with a few strings attached. "There are three requirements," said Dennis Pierce, coordinator of the project and an instructor at the academy. "It has to be maintained in its original modifications, without changes, it has to be kid-proof and it has to be bird-proof."

Dallas Airmotive has promised to donate the paint and Robbins said the museum is looking for donations of materials or money for the restoration from other sources. Robbins said the aircraft will be kept in a hangar when completed, which may be sometime around August. Just which hangar is still being worked out. "It will be regularly inspected, like a regular airplane that is flying," he said.

Several A&P students are working on the jet in order to gain valuable experience toward their certification. The apprentices are doing structural repairs, making patches and changing rivets. Robbins indicated it will take from nine months to a year to complete, at which time about 25 students will have worked on it, completing work that would cost $150,000 to $200,000 if contracted. When this one is done, the academy will be looking for other classic aircraft to restore, he said. Most airplanes are flown in, then deactivated. The military sends out a crew to take off the explosive bolts for the ejection seats and bomb racks. "Once in a while, the military donates a real, live aircraft for students to work on. They will loan it to the school forever, as long as we maintain it. This is an excellent project. What these guys learned the past couple of weeks working around this aircraft they could never have learned from a book. It's real work experience."

Robbins said another important aspect to the project is preserving a historic aircraft. "The A-4 was sometimes used as a drone, refitted to use as a target for live missile shoots, or just left to rot," he said. Pierce trained on an A-4 when he first went into the Marines, so this restoration is more meaningful to him. "It was pretty amazing when I saw that at the museum. I trained on an A-4. I worked on an A-4," he said.

FMI: www.p47millville.org/main.html