The slowly fading art of flying—and maintaining—Cold War fighter jets

HOUSTON—My first thought was that I should have rented a wider lens. Sitting in front of me was a vintage two-seat Douglas TA-4J Skyhawk, and this aircraft dominated the space. It loomed like a temporarily grounded raptor, simultaneously enormous and oddly toy-like. The Skyhawk sat poised on chocked gear with its nose cocked slightly upward, like it was ready this very instant to go decorate a jungle canopy with a long string of burning nape. A painted Playboy bunny perched impudently at the top of the empennage—the logo of Headquarters & Maintenance Squadron 11, based out of Danang, Vietnam.

No matter how far back I shuffled in the crowded hangar, I couldn’t quite fit the whole aircraft in frame. Let that be a lesson, would-be photographers: the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L is a hell of a lens, but sometimes, 24mm just isn’t wide enough.

Four, on the floor

The Skyhawk—the first of four vintage jets I got to see this day—holds Bureau Number 153524 and first saw service in 1967 in "Fast FAC" missions over Vietnam (that is, "Forward Air Control" missions into "hot" areas). It is now the property of the Massachusetts-based Collings Foundation, an education nonprofit group that maintains a large number of historical aircraft from various eras. Several of the Foundation’s Vietnam-era aircraft are stabled in Ellington Field, southeast of Houston in Clear Lake and just a few miles away from the Johnson Space Center. The Foundation’s website features detailed write-ups on the provenance of each of its aircraft, including 153524, but my visit to the hangars in Ellington wasn’t an official Foundation activity—rather, it was the result of a personal request to professional pilot and family friend Rick Sharpe.

Sharpe might be a somewhat familiar name to Ars readers. A couple of years ago, he took me up in a Folland Gnat trainer for a quick acrobatic jaunt. At the time, he mentioned that he was busy working on several other jets, including a MiG-21, and invited me to come and see the aircraft when I had time.

As it turns out, Sharpe is a great fellow to know. He’s chief pilot for the Collings Foundation in Houston and for the World War II-focused Lone Star Flight Museum; he's also the president of the Vietnam War Flight Museum, which partners with the Collings Foundation and maintains its own stable of vintage aircraft (both display and flight-worthy). As we paced around the Skyhawk, Sharpe told us that the Collings Foundation and the Vietnam War Flight Museum together maintain the largest collection of flyable Vietnam-era aircraft in the world.

"It’s a beautiful aircraft to fly," Sharpe said as we stepped gingerly through the crowded hangar. Soon he talked us through the provenance of the A-4 (the Collings Foundation site has a detailed write-up of the aircraft’s history that is far more complete than anything I can provide). "But it is a delta wing airplane. It flies under power. If you pull the power off on landing, you’ll do it once—you won’t do it twice!" He continued giving us a quick lesson in aerodynamics and physics: the small wing area made the A-4 well-suited for service on an aircraft carrier, where hangar and deck space is at a premium, but it comes with penalties to the flight characteristics. In particular, a delta wing shape like the A-4 comes with a lot of drag, which means you need a lot of thrust to keep the wings generating lift.

"How many hours do you have on this particular aircraft?" I asked.

"Oh, I haven’t got that many in this one," Sharpe said modestly. "I’ve just got maybe about 50 hours in this aircraft."

Sharpe is a tall fellow, a silver-haired aviator with a ready smile who radiates a feeling of confidence and presence. He’s clearly in his element as he points out the aircraft’s features in a tour guide’s voice flavored with a bit of Texas twang. He knows what he’s doing because he’s been flying for longer than I’ve been alive—Sharpe went through flight training courtesy of the Navy in January 1976. When we ask how many aircraft he’s qualified in, he pauses for a moment and looks at the ceiling. "Um—I flew the T-33s, the Venom, the Vampire, the Casa, the Fouga, the F-86, the F-100, the A-4, the MiG-21, MiG-17, MiG-15…" He doesn’t mention the Folland Gnat I rode in, nor the Hawker and Citation jets he flies professionally for the aircraft management company he runs as a day job, nor the Huey and Cobra helicopters he gets to tool around in at the Vietnam War Flight Museum.

We’ve got the hangar to ourselves on this mid-week early morning, and Sharpe lets us climb up into the A-4’s dual cockpit. There are dual controls, front and rear, and the rear seat would be occupied by either the instructor-pilot if the aircraft was on a training flight or by the forward air controller if the aircraft was flying a "Fast FAC" sortie. I step gingerly over the side and onto the seat and then lower myself into the cockpit. I feel like a banana being dressed back up in its peel—the fit is extremely snug. It’s obvious, sitting in the tight space, why pilots sometimes refer to the belting-in process as "strapping on the aircraft." It smells of oil, hydraulic fluid, fuel, and old canvas—it smells, I think, like war. It’s difficult to wedge my camera into the cockpit at an angle where I can get any of the instruments in frame and focused. Once again, I wish for that wider lens.

Sharpe tells me it’s OK to move the controls, so I push down on the rudder pedals. The force required to budge them is tremendous. I grunt, and he laughs. "The aircraft can actually be flown in manual reversion mode—you can actually fly the airplane without hydraulics. Whereas with the F-100, if you lose the hydraulics, you’re done."

Before we leave the A-4 to walk to the next aircraft, I ask him about power and thrust. The A-4 lacks an afterburner, but its dual-spool Pratt & Whitney J52 turbojet makes 9,600 lbs of thrust (about 42 kN), giving the approximately 11,000 lb (about 5,000kg) aircraft an extremely zippy thrust-to-weight ratio. "It’s got awesome acceleration," he said with a smile. "But the A-4 doesn’t have a flying tail—it’s got a conventional elevator, so it’s kind of like the MiG-17. It’s considered a transonic aircraft. Could they go supersonic? Yeah. Would you like it? No. You’re gonna lose some elevator control. It doesn’t have any q-gearing or the things that make a supersonic aircraft handle well in the high transonic range."