A little restoration project

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By Brandy Nance (Contact)

Saturday, September 13, 2008

A recent restoration project at Thurston’s Plus Auto Body and More, 708 Lantern Lane, had heads turning as several people asked, “what is that?”

The odd-looking object was a cockpit from the last F111D fighter jet. Thurston’s received the cockpit in January and sent it to its new home at the Topeka Combat Air Museum at Forbes Field in July. The cockpit will be at the air museum for a few years with the hopes that it will move to The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., or the U.S. Air Force Museum in Ohio.

The F111D is one of many custom restoration projects Thurston’s has undertaken. They also restored and painted the Emporia Arts Council Art Mobile, the Patriot Guard Trailer and many custom car and motorcycle body and paint jobs.

The F111D first went into service in September of 1972. Before it crashed in September 1987, it completed 1,444 flight and 3,494.2 flight hours. The airplane crashed near Clovis, N.M. The crew was able to eject safely.

A unique feature of the F-111 series was that the entire cockpit could be fired clear of the disabled plane and be lowered to the ground by parachutes. The cockpit is all that is left of the plane that crashed.

“After some down time, she was used as a water trainer for several years,” according to a written statement from Thurston’s. “She even had to be pulled from the bottom of the training pool with a crane. If she could only talk.”

Beth Wilson, co-owner of Thurston’s, said when the aircraft needed to be stripped of paint, it became evident that it had been painted over three times and 14 quart cups of screws were removed from the craft to be stripped and restored. Every screw had to be removed to take off the paint and functionally mark the craft.

“We got it back to the way it was,” Wilson said. “We got multiple photographs and melded them together. We wanted it right.”