Vintage planes take flight: Shelbyville Municipal Airport (KSYI), Tennessee

The Shelbyville Municipal Airport hosted three vintage military aircraft and their crews on Friday.

Two Vietnam-era planes and a Korean War cargo craft visited the airport en route to this weekend's The Great Tennessee Air Show at the Smyrna airport.

The crews waited in Shelbyville while the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron practiced in the Smyrna airspace Friday afternoon, said Pete O'Hare, a retired U.S. Marine Corps aviator who volunteers with an aviation museum.

Air show

That museum, the Hixson Museum of Flight in Chattanooga, is participating in the Smyrna air show which started Saturday and continues today. Museum volunteers are flying two T-28s and a C-45H in the air show.

The U.S. used the T-28s, which are turboprop craft, as trainers starting in the 1950s but also as counterinsurgency aircraft in the Vietnam War. One of the museum's T-28s was sold to Honduras for $1 and used in the 100 Hours War in 1969, where it shot down a Salvadoran P-51, O'Hare said.

The other T-28 still has patched bullet holes, he said.

The C-45 was used to fly cargo and military VIPs between Osan Air Base and Pohang during the Korean War, O'Hare said.

Restoration

The Hixson museum, which is only about 4 years old, painstakingly refurbished the three aircraft after finding them in a junkyard, he said.

"They were rotting, falling down pieces of crap," said O'Hare, who previously served as air show director for the Blue Angels while stationed in Hawaii. He retired in March 2013 after being based at Naval Air Station Atlanta.

The Marine Corps donated materials, including decals, for the restoration, said Capt. Andreas Montgomery, another museum volunteer. Montgomery owns an Athens, Tennessee, business that restores and test flies restored aircraft.

Volunteers

The museum's Smyrna crew included several more volunteers, including "Gunnie" Ronnie Cox, a retired military mechanic who served in Vietnam. He said he served for 24 years in the Marines, Army and National Guards, but was discharged after suffering the effects of Agent Orange from the war.

The Hixson museum does more than restore and fly vintage aircraft, O'Hare said. The museum has raised $20,000 for Children's Hospital at Erlanger in Chattanooga.

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