Museum hopes fundraiser lifts off for Cold War fighter
More than six decades after its crash landing, keepers of a vintage Cold War fighter plane are hoping a fundraising effort will patch up the storied aircraft.
Different types of metals used in the early 1950s-built CF-100 Canuck have the plane “rusting from the inside out,” as it endures the elements next to the Hangar Flight Museum in northeast Calgary, said spokesman Herb Grieder.
The museum will kick off its effort to raise funds for the $325,000 restoration of the city-owned aircraft on Giving Tuesday — Nov. 27.
The city has said it’ll provide $243,000 of that funding if the museum comes up with the rest by year’s end, said its executivedirector Brian Desjardins.
“It’s a strong, potential opportunity . ... We’ve already raised $15,000 which can be a leverage for other grants,” he said.
Calgarians might recall the plane — the only Canadian-designed fighter to go into mass production — resting outside the former Centennial Planetarium after the city purchased it for $1 in April 1973.
It’s been in Alberta since 1955, a year after it experienced a crash landing believed to have occurred in Ontario, said Grieder.
The CF-100, which flew as Cold War tensions with the Soviet bloc escalated, was known as The Clunk, he said.
“When the landing gear came down and locked in, there was a definite ‘clunk’ and pilots say if you didn’t hear that, the landing gear hadn’t locked,” said Grieder.
Restoring the aircraft will take several years; a process that will likely include painting it back to its original colours from the current black, he said. The museum expects to increase its tent coverage capacity to accommodate the refurbished CF-100.
It’s one of a few vintage planes under restoration that will be exhibited at the museum. Another is a Hawker Hurricane, a type most famous for its exploits during the Battle of Britain in 1940.
It’s being restored at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin and should be returned to the Hangar Flight Museum next spring, said Grieder.
Those wishing to make a donation for the restoration of the CF100 can go to thehangarmuseum. ca. The fundraising campaign runs until the end of the year.