Restoring a warbird

A Vietnam-era warbird is getting sanded and a fresh coat of camouflage paint in preparation for the Pacific Coast Air Museum's air show, where it will be the first plane seen as people enter the gate.

"Every year we try very hard to select an aircraft of interest and restore it to pristine condition and use it as the centerpiece," said Dave Pinski, the air museum's executive director. "This one was overdue."

The F-105F Thunderchief undergoing restoration will be the centerpiece of the museum's 12th annual air show Aug. 16 and 17 at the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport.

The plane has been owned by the museum for eight years and shown at the annual Wings Over Wine Country air show in its unrestored form.

The Thunderchief was built by Republic Aviation from 1955 to 1973 and played a significant role in the Vietnam War. It was a fighter-bomber that pilots purposefully made a target for surface-to-air missiles so they could spot and destroy enemy radar sites.

"It was the workhorse of Vietnam; more of these were shot down than any other plane," Pinski said.

The aircraft was heavy, fast and tough. One pilot returned from a mission not knowing that an enemy missile had put a hole in his plane's tail, said Tony Sarganis of Rohnert Park, a Thunderchief crew chief during the Vietnam War.

Sarganis and Hawley Paint store owner Jim Cook were at the museum Tuesday, sanding the plane in preparation for painting and polishing the canopy.

Sarganis said it will take 400 hours of work by the volunteers to get it looking as good as when it rolled off Republic's Farmingdale, N.Y., assembly line in 1964.

For the volunteers, it is a labor of love, but especially for Sarganis, who was in the Air Force and was a crew chief on these planes while stationed in Okinawa and Thailand.

"The guys who flew it loved it," Sarganis said. "It could take a lot of battle damage and bring them home."

The F-105 cruised at 778 mph, but with a top speed of 1,390 mph, it could outrun any other aircraft. It could also reach an altitude of almost 10 miles.

Outfitted for electronic warfare, the last variation was nicknamed the Wild Weasel.

The museum's plane was built in 1964 and used as a flight trainer at airbases in the United States and in Turkey, England and Italy. It last flew in 1982.

"To this day, it still inspires me," Sarganis said. "On the deck, nothing could catch it, nothing."

It was acquired by the museum from the Sierra Army Depot in Herlong, where it was on display, and it has been sitting at the museum in its unrestored form ever since.

This month's air show will have about 75 planes and helicopters on display, of which two dozen belong to the museum.

Those include modern jet fighters, prop-driven warbirds, an aerobatics plane and a former Cal Fire firefighting tanker.

There will be demonstrations by military and private aerobatic teams, and the Air Force's C-17 Globemaster III, a military cargo plane capable of taking off and landing on short runways, and a fly-by parade of vintage military aircraft.

Next Thursday, there also will be a vintage Lockheed P-38 arriving at the airport, which during World War II, was an Army airfield to train P-38 and Bell P-39 pilots.

You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.