Old Warplanes Never Die--They Just Require New Parts

Nimble and compact. Flying it was like driving a Triumph Spitfire sports car--at 700 mph. That’s how Navy pilots remember the A-4 Skyhawk.

This weekend, the Navy is officially retiring the Skyhawk, whose deft handling made it one of the key bombers in Vietnam and one of the most versatile military planes ever flown.

But America’s old military planes don’t really disappear. Many get recycled to other nations and keep on flying.

Some 2,960 A-4s were built in El Segundo, Long Beach and Palmdale by Douglas Aircraft, the last in 1979. About 300 are still flying in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

And since old aircraft need new parts, the longevity of American jets is helping to keep alive hundreds of parts makers in Southern California.

The region churned out combat aircraft from before the end of World War II through the Cold War, including the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Northrop F-5 Tiger, Lockheed P-3 Orion and Douglas C-47. Although its aircraft industry has diminished greatly, Southern California remains one of the nation’s largest manufacturing centers for aircraft parts.

Visiting a Southern California airplane parts factory is like walking through 60 years of aviation history--with blueprints and part molds on hand for everything from the DC-3, which first flew in 1935, to the ‘50s-era F-4 Phantom II fighter jet, and the B-52 bomber. Replacement parts, such as rubber gaskets, landing gear assemblies or windshields, can cost from $5 to tens of thousands of dollars apiece.

“These old planes are going to outlive us all,” said Frank Power, executive vice president at Sonfarrel in Anaheim, which makes thousands of different military parts a year.

The U.S. military limits its front-line planes--such as the B-2 and F-117A Stealth fighter--to its own fleet. But other U.S. jet fighters, such as the F-15 and F-16, have been sold abroad new for $40 million to $50 million each, or more. For many foreign governments, the chance to buy much older used American military planes at bargain prices is a great lure.

Five years ago Argentina bought 36 A-4 Skyhawks, reportedly for $200,000 to $300,000 apiece, although the planes required a couple hundred million dollars in renovations. Lockheed Martin won a maintenance deal for those A-4s, and is putting in new wiring systems, overhauling engines and updating the avionics.

“American military equipment lasts a very, very long time when properly cared for,” said Lockheed Martin spokesperson James Fetig. “Some countries of modest means may find American equipment, even secondhand, better than other equipment available to them in that price range.”

And so job shops such as Frazier Aviation in San Fernando stay in business. The company was opened in 1956 by the late Robert Frazier, an 18-year Douglas veteran, who began supplying parts for his former employer. His son Robert Frazier III is now the company’s chief operating officer. The firm has 38 employees and books $3 million to $5 million a year in sales, with about one-third from replacement parts for American aircraft now flown overseas.

On the factory floor, Frazier points to a 350-pound piece of aluminum called a longeron, a 26-foot-long structural part for a Lockheed C-130 cargo plane. It links the rear ramp door to the aircraft’s tail.

Stacked nearby are half a dozen long wooden crates, each with a longeron, packed as carefully as brontosaurus bones. These C-130 replacement parts cost about $10,000 each, and the blueprints for this part stretch eight feet across an office wall next to the small factory.

Making C-130 replacement parts provides steady revenue for Frazier because the plane is the military version of a U-haul van. Flying since 1954, new C-130s are still being made and the planes have carried cargo to every corner of the world, from Vietnam to Kosovo. The U.S. military and 72 other nations fly the four-engine propjet.

“Most of the world flies American-made planes,” Frazier said.

For Sonfarrel, building parts for older military aircraft is part of its bread and butter. In business since 1957, the company’s 100 employees turn out metal, plastic and rubber components for ancient and modern military hardware, including fighter planes, missiles, tanks and commercial aircraft.

Sonfarrel’s Power holds up a crop of new A-4 replacement parts: a soft orange rubber gasket for the hydraulic system; a plastic chart holder for a pilot’s flight log; and a 2-foot-long urinal pipe for the cockpit, made of rubber, metal and fabric and crafted to original specifications.

Another part for a ‘50s-era military jet, the McDonnell Douglas F-4, is ready to go: a stack of bright yellow, rubber-coated cockpit handles, with the words printed clearly at the base: PULL TO EJECT. The plane is used by 10 foreign air forces, including those of Germany, Britain and Spain.

Sonfarrel builds replacement parts directly for aircraft manufacturers and for the U.S. government, but its business often comes from parts brokers, small firms well-connected to the murky intricacies of foreign governments. Power often fields queries on the same part from four or five brokers. He quotes the same price, but only one broker will win the contract.

If one of those brokers wins the contract, the broker then subcontracts out to a job shop, like Sonfarrel, often for only five to 30 copies of a part.

Sonfarrel delivers them to the broker, but then the supply chain gets mysterious. Where are these F-4 ejection handles going? “They will end up overseas. Where, exactly, I don’t know,” Power said.

Then Power walks into his “Skunk Works,” where a small team is making copies of an A-4 part without any blueprints. On the work stand sits a metal engine cowling for an exhaust. The piece was ripped out of an A-4 and sent by the customer.

Powers’ workers, who are paid $6 to $20 an hour, are dutifully crafting together six metal pieces to re-create this one cowling part. Power took the time-consuming order in the hope that it will pay off in 20 years of future orders for this offbeat part.

Not all aircraft replacement parts are built in metal-bending shops. At the higher end is Sierracin Corp., whose aviation division in Sylmar includes 560 employees and makes canopies, windshields and windows for a fleet of American military and commercial planes.

Sometimes the problem for a fighter pilot isn’t enemy fire, it’s enemy birds. When an F-15 pilot flies a low-level bombing mission, running into a flock of birds can crack the windshield. So Sierracin sells an innovative replacement F-15 windshield, priced at $10,000 to $20,000, that is made from a tougher polycarbonate plastic. It allows an F-15 pilot to fly 650 knots without worrying about birds, compared to the 350-knot threshold of the original design. The F-15 is flown in the United States and in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Japan, so some Sierracin windshields go overseas through U.S. military resales.

Billy Hinds, president of the Sierracin/Sylmar aviation division, expects sales to jump 25% to 30% this year. “There isn’t much foreign competition for us,” he said.

Most parts makers, though, are feeling the pinch of overseas competition.

Farrar Aerospace in Ontario started making parts during World War II, but it is down to 12 employees from about 100 two decades ago, said Victor Tao, company president. “We are so small we can survive,” he said.

Farrar has shrunk because its American customers have lost ground to military and commercial aircraft sales by other countries.

Frazier Aviation is feeling the squeeze, too. Bob Frazier points to a C-130 metal floor panel that he sells for about $4,500, compared to $8,000 a decade ago. Frazier’s work force is about half that of a decade ago, and he is trying to edge into making automotive parts.

Some firms try to stay healthy by supplying parts for obscure military planes. Maney Aircraft in Ontario specializes in parts for a handful of planes, including the OV-10, a Vietnam-era turboprop made by North American Aviation and used as an armed reconnaissance plane. The OV-10 is used now by Colombia to combat drug smugglers, and is flown by Venezuela, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

“They can always find parts here,” said Martin Bright, president of Maney Aircraft, which has 45 employees.

He is now bidding on a multimillion-dollar maintenance deal with Venezuela to replace corroded body panels, wiring harnesses and landing gear on the nation’s OV-10 fleet.

Many firms consider the skill of manufacturing a precision aircraft part to be like an annuity that can keep paying off. Frazier Aviation’s chief financial officer, Charles Ricard, is negotiating to supply Israel with new hydraulic parts for its fleet of A-4s.

So when Ricard visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington this month, he got a bit stormy when the man next to him confidently pointed to a row of jets and said that all of those planes were retired, including the A-4.

“I beg your pardon. I feed my family supplying parts for this plane,” Ricard told him.