World War II Pacific rarities being revived for the Classic Jets Fighter Museum at Parafield airport

The Classic Jets Fighter Museum at Hangar 52, Parafield Airport, has restored some rare examples of old fighter planes.
Image courtesy TripAdvisor

Restoring rare and classic World War II Pacific conflict fighter aircraft has been a feature of thework of volunteers at the Classic Jets Fighter Museum at Hangar 52, Parafield Airport.

The museum’s first restoration coup was a P38 H Lockheed Lightning 42-66841. Of 9,923 of these big twin-engine fighters made by Lockheed in 1937-45, the museum’s is only one of 25 remaining. It was flown in Papua and New Guinea operations until a forced landing in 1943.

Another of the museum’s prizes is a World War II Corsair F4U-1 S/N 02270 salvaged from Vanuatu, where it forcelanded in a lagoon, near Quoin Hill fighter strip, in 1944. The pilot escaped uninjured and its machine guns were removed the next day and the aircraft was abandoned. Restoring this aircraft – the world’s oldest surviving Corsair, with a data plate indicating it was No.124 off the production line – has been ambitious and challenging.

Five other Corsair crash sites have supplied many hard-to-find components for the project. Bob Jarrett, founder of the museum in 1996, was also helped by the loan of airworthy airframe modules and the ingenuity of volunteers involved in the restoring in adjoining Hangar 107.

The museum also presented a range of former RAAF and RAN jet aircraft from the 1950s to the 1980s. It also offered the chance to sit behind the controls of a RAAF Mirage, Sabre and RAN Sea Venom jet fighters. Added to these were military aviation artefacts and conventional, radial and jet aircraft engines.

In 2019, Jarrett announced the selloff of 670 items –  including the RAN Sea Venom, a Mirage jet cockpit section and a Jindivick pilotless drone – to finance the completion of the Corsair project.