Preparing for the arrival of new F-35s, the 104th Fighter Wing donated a historic F-15C Eagle jet on Monday to the New England Air Museum.
Col. Michael “Shot” Glass, operations group commander for the 104th based at Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, flew the 48-year-old F-15C Eagle on its last flight, a hop from the base in Westfield to Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, where the New England Air Museum is located, a distance of just 15 air miles and across the state line.
“It’s awesome to be able to have this jet enshrined here in the air museum,” Glass said, according to a video of the arrival made by the museum.
He was told that the aircraft will be displayed close to its operational configuration, likely with his name still on the fuselage.
Stephanie Abrams, president and CEO of the New England Air Museum, was on the tarmac when Glass arrived at about 11 a.m.
“It’s a remarkable piece of military history,” Abrams said, “which we are insanely excited about.”
The Cold War-era plane will be displayed in the museum’s military hangar, joining an A-10 Warthog, an F-100 and a Douglas A-26 Invader from World War II. The museum’s B-29 is in its own hangar, near an exhibit honoring the all-black Tuskegee Airmen and their triumphs despite the segregated Army Air Forces of World War II.
On the civilian side, the museum also boasts the oldest surviving American-built aircraft, the Silas Brooks balloon basket made in Connecticut in the 1870s by Brooks, a Plymouth, Connecticut, native.
But before the F-15 delivered Monday can join the display collection of more than 100 aircraft, crews at the Connecticut Air National Guard’s 103rd Airlift Wing based at Bradley will demilitarize it, Abrams said in an interview.
“They take out anything that is high security, that cannot be seen by anyone who doesn’t have high clearance,” Abrams said.
Then, the aircraft has to sit outside to off-gas, she said, giving off dangerous chemicals in the form of gasses.
“Then we are going to roll it inside,” she said. “I can’t wait.”
It is a historic aircraft, having deployed in Operation Desert Storm, and is credited with taking down a MiG-25 Foxbat flown by Iraq.
Glass told Abrams on Monday he’s been communicating with the pilot from that mission.
The F-15C Eagle was the premier fourth-generation air superiority fighter used by the U.S. Air Force since the design entered service in 1976. Its ties to Connecticut include its two Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-220 engines, enabling the Eagle to accelerate straight up with a thrust to weight ratio of 1.17 to 1.
Modified versions of the jet are still being used today, Abrams said.
She said that while located in Connecticut, it is the New England Air Museum, and Abrams wants to celebrate the accomplishments of the 104th.
The Air Force announced in 2023 that it plans to base as many as 21 of its $78 million, latest-generation F-35 fighters with the 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes. Training for pilots is expected to begin next year, and the new planes will arrive in 2026.
It’s an economic boost to Westfield, too. The total number of base personnel would increase by about 80 people, including 15 officers and 65 enlisted military members, though officials say those numbers might fluctuate.
Construction already has begun on a $63 million expansion of a taxiway at Barnes.
At the museum, a new exhibit on longtime Connecticut resident — “Through The Eyes of Igor Sikorsky” — opens in November, tracing his boyhood, his immigration and the Sikorsky company’s continued innovations in Connecticut.
___
© 2024 Advance Local Media LLC
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
