A two-seat Canadian Starfighter similar to what the Alberta Aviation Museum’s plane would look like, once fully restored.
The Alberta Aviation Museum has only 10 days left to raise $47,000 for a fighter jet that’s a major part of the province’s aerospace history.
For seven years, the museum has been looking for a Starfighter F-104, the fastest plane ever operated in Canada and a key part of Edmonton’s aviation repair industry. They just found one, at a cost of $70,000, and have collected $23,000 in donations so far.
But the broker can only put the sale on hold until Dec. 14.
“This could be our last shot at getting one of these aircraft,” said the museum’s executive director Tom Hinderks.
The Starfighter F-104 is also known as “the missile with a man in it” because of its missile-like appearance and extreme speed: half a kilometre per second, more than two times the speed of sound.
In the 1960s, Canada built around 200 single-seat Starfighter CF-104s, which were used on the front lines for around 25 years, both by Canadians in NATO and defending Canadian air space during the Cold War. The Canadian military also owned 40 two-seater Starfighters made by American manufacturer Lockheed, which were used to train pilots at CFB Cold Lake until the 1980s.
“At the time we had the fastest plane going out of the fighters in North America,” Hinderks said Saturday. Even now, it’s the fastest aircraft Canada has ever operated.
The Starfighter is an important part of city history, too, Hinderks said. Thousands of local people were involved in the service and maintenance of those aircraft at a huge aviation repair facility here. “All of the Canadian Starfighters were overhauled here in Edmonton.”
In seven years, Hinderks hasn’t found any Canadian Starfighters to buy, but model for sale currently is a two-seater American Starfighter in The Netherlands equipped the same as a Canadian version.
The aviation museum doesn’t normally buy airplanes. Most of the 56 planes in their collection were donated or recovered as a wreck, then restored.
But Starfighters are growing in popularity, Hinderks said. In the United States, the planes are being contracted to NASA and the military to train astronauts since they can move fast enough to cause weightlessness. The planes are also being used as cruise missile simulators and to launch suborbital rockets. Plus, they’re a popular collectible.
“The price is escalating, the demand is increasing,” Hinderks said. The chances of getting a Starfighter by donation is unlikely and the complexity of the aircraft makes rebuilding a wreck prohibitive. “We’ve got our backs against the wall.”
The $70,000 Starfighter in The Netherlands has a complete cockpit and intact engine but can no longer be flown due to minor corrosion.
The plane is 17 metres long, 6.5 metres wide and four metres high. Small enough “you could literally pull it down a two-lane road,” and Hinderks says visitors would be able to get into the cockpit on select days, making the plane “the tool we need to be able to tell this story in an exciting way.”
Hinderks is appealing to the public and corporations to help them raise the remaining $47,000 before Dec. 14.
“I have faith,” he said. “I never give up. We’ve got some time yet.”
The Starfighter “will allow us to tell the military story, and the story of the Edmontonians who worked in aerospace for decades, doing this high-tech work, and the legacy they left.”
Donations to the museum for the purchase can be made by calling 780-451-1175 or by visiting albertaaviationmuseum.com.
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