MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — The U.S. Air Force F-4C Phantom here has seen better days. The 1964 fighter jet is believed to have made one of the service’s first F-4 “kills” of a MiG-17 during the Vietnam War.

Until recently, it sat on display in front of 35th Fighter Wing headquarters, with green moss, rust, chipping paint, holes and even a sparrow’s nest in the right wing tip camouflaging its proud history.

The sparrows have been “shooed,” while the old metallic bird is getting a much-needed paint job and more.

“Our primary goal is to restore the airplane to static display condition so it looks nice,” said Master Sgt. Samuel Stubbs, 35th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron aircraft structural maintenance shop chief.

Those orders came from 35th Fighter Wing Commander Brig. Gen. Sam Angelella, who noticed the corrosion after a unit on temporary duty at Misawa stuck its unit sticker on the plane, Stubbs said.

The aircraft was towed to a maintenance hangar in July. Stubbs said airmen who normally work on F-16s are getting some valuable training on patching and sealing holes, repairing sheet metal and refurbishing the F-4 to its former glory.

“You hardly ever get to do the types of repairs they’re doing now on an F-16,” he said. “The plane doesn’t break that much.”

Airmen fresh from technical school, who are training to become better craftsmen, typically practice on a simulated aircraft structure small enough to fit on a desk.

“It’s not the same because the sheet metal is real thin, you have easy access and that’s not always the case when you’re working on the real thing,” Stubbs said. “This is awesome training, and they have to struggle. You have real thick skins, you have steel fasteners, you’re working over your head … you have hot steel shavings falling on your shirt.”

That’s all stuff Senior Airman Nick Williams calls “pretty cool.”

“We don’t get to do much sheet metal here, so it’s kind of nice to go at it and do what we want,” he said Tuesday morning while working on the plane.

For maintainers, Stubbs said, the F-16 and F-4 have very similar airframes.

The final step in the process will be repainting the F-4 in its original light gray top and white underbelly. Stubbs also wants to restore some of the plane’s original markings, including the number of successful bombing missions, if base officials can track down the two-seater’s original aviators or an old photo.

But first holes must be patched with corrosion-fighting sealant. Some of the holes are left over from the plane’s days in Aircraft Battle Damage Repair, where airmen would punch holes in the aircraft and speedily patch them, Stubbs said.

In the right wingtip, a few one-inch-wide openings apparently were just large enough to let some pioneering sparrows build nests inside.

“The birds had to move,” Stubbs said. “We opened the hangar door [and said], ‘Shoo, shoo, shoo!’”

“They were all adults. We pulled the nests out and there were no babies, so I didn’t feel so bad,” he said.

Phantom's history a matter of debate, shop says

MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — The F-4C Phantom in the shop for repairs and refurbishment has a colorful history: It’s believed to be either the first or second Air Force F-4 to take down a MiG-17 during the Vietnam War.

“It’s debatable,” said retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. David Barton, a former maintenance shop supervisor at Misawa. On a July 10, 1965, mission over North Vietnam, two F-4s were involved in air-to-air combat with enemy MiG-17s, Barton said.

“Depending on which pilot you talked to, he shot the first one down or the second one. They were within a minute or so of each other. We like to think that it was our aircraft.”

Misawa’s plane was a 1964 model first commissioned as a Navy jet and later transferred to the Air Force, Barton said. The aircraft landed at Misawa in 1988 after stints with the National Guard in Illinois and Oregon and was placed in the wing’s Aircraft Battle Damage Repair program.

“We punched holes in it for a couple of years,” Barton said. But in 1990, a photo of it ended up in a stateside magazine. An aviation enthusiast identified it as “one of the MiG killers,” Barton said, and called then-wing commander Col. John Lorber. Lorber ordered the shop to repair the aircraft.

Barton said the plane’s history is significant.

“There’s a number of them that shot MiGs down in the war, but a lot of them didn’t make it back,” he said.

And what happened to the other F-4 competing for bragging rights?

“It never made it back,” Barton said. “It got shot down almost a year to the day later.”

— Jennifer H. Svan

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