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Tennessee flight museum has T-28s and more

One T-28 fighter plane was used for U.S. covert operations in Southeast Asia in the early 1960s. Another T-28 saw military action in Vietnam and Honduras.

The 1956 twin-engine Piper Apache was called “aviation’s answer to the family station wagon.”

These and more are among the aircraft on display at the Museum of Flight in Hixson, Tenn.

The nonprofit museum opened at the Dallas Bay Skypark with little fanfare in May to raise public awareness of historical aircraft and support T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital in nearby Chattanooga.

Soon, volunteers will undertake one of the museum’s biggest operations to date — the 800-horsepower engine from one of its T-28s must be removed and prepared for shipment to California for repair.

The museum has committed to having its two 1950s-era, silver-gray T-28s in three Marine air shows next year.

They’re “an important part of history,” said Coleen Pruitt, the museum’s curator. “They’re an amazing piece of machinery.”

The 1,400-horsepower T-28 Bravo was employed in Operation Farmgate, a counterinsurgency operation in Vietnam in the early 1960s. Although it has been stripped and repainted and will be outfitted as a Marine fighter, it still has patched bullet holes evident from its covert Air Force life.

The other T-28 served near Da Nang, Vietnam, for three or four years, Pruitt said. It was later sold for $1 to Honduras, where it saw action in the Soccer War, or 100-Hours War, with El Salvador in 1969, she said.

— The Associated Press