KALAMAZOO, MI – The restoration of a General Motors/Eastern Aircraft Division FM-2 “Wildcat” fighter that sat upside down on the bottom of Lake Michigan for 68 years has officially begun at the Air Zoo. “Our restoration team was champing at the bit,” Thrash said. “It’s like taking a kid into a candy store and not allowing the kid to get candy and just say ‘You’re going to be in here for five months.’ So having that airplane here, they were so excited to work on it, so as soon as we got that green light they were rolling and they’re doing some wonderful work already.”
Thrash said that one of the reasons that the Air Zoo was chosen to restore this aircraft was because it would serve as a way to educate and engage the community. Air Zoo volunteers will be working to restore the plane over the course of the next four to five years.
“We didn’t really want to do restoration for restoration’s sake,” Thrash said. “We wanted to really expand this to become a community education project. The opportunity to say that I was a part of that restoration and that I helped to sand that wing or I helped to clean something or I turned a wrench or I drove a rivet or something like that we thought would be a fantastic piece of community engagement.”
Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/08/air_zoo_to_restore_historic_ww.html
Air Zoo to restore historic WWII fighter plane after 68 years at Lake Michigan bottom