Flight for the fourth

• By GEORGE MORRIS
• News Features staff writer
• Published: Jul 4, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 am

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For several years, visitors to the USS Kidd Veterans Memorial & Museum could see a World War II fighter plane that fought in the Pacific. Today, those attending today’s Fourth of July Star-Spangled Celebration along the downtown riverfront will only have to look up to spot it.

The Curtiss P-40 fighter that had not flown since 1944 is now airworthy and will engage in a mock attack on the USS Kidd as part of the annual patriotic extravaganza, which concludes with Fireworks on the Mississippi at 9 p.m.

This won’t be the first time a World War II military plane participated in the mock combat, which has been part of the July 4th celebration for about 20 years, said Maury Drummond, Kidd executive director. Most years, World War II-era T-6 military training planes have flown in the mock attacks, but past events also have included a B-24 bomber and Japanese Zero, British Spitfire and Vought F4U Corsair fighter planes.

None of those airplanes, however, were once part of the Kidd Museum. That is where Lafayette businessman John Fallis saw it and decided he wanted to see it fly again.

“I’ve been into aviation since I was a kid with models,” Fallis said. “Just one thing led to another. I rebuild airplanes. That’s kind of my hobby. I just wanted to rebuild one with significance.”

To get it, Fallis made a donation to the museum and provided a replica P-40 in exchange for the real one. It had been built in 1943 and was sent to the 5th Air Force in the Southwest Pacific theater. It served and fought with the 49th Fighter Group until May, 1944, when it was damaged and abandoned at an airfield in New Guinea.

The airplane remained there for 30 years before aircraft collector David Tallichet recovered it and other fighter planes, Fallis said.

Tallichet replaced some of the corroded parts with fiberglass and used the P-40 as a prop in a restaurant he owned. In 1984, Tallichet donated the airplane to LSU, which stored it inside Tiger Stadium for several years before the Kidd Museum acquired the plane and painted it to resemble fighters in the “Flying Tigers” squadrons commanded by Gen. Claire Chennault, who was raised in Louisiana.

Fallis got the plane in 1998 and has been restoring it at Lafayette Regional Airport. It’s been quite a project.

His research included getting factory drawings from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The hardest part of the restoration was finding parts.

Fallis got a P-40 engine from Australia. The propeller came from New York. One of the landing gears he found in California, the other in Australia. About 75 percent of the restoration is either original or sourced P-40 parts. The rest — mostly sheet metal — had to be fabricated. Bill Goodwin did the sheet metal work.

“It would have been impossible without him,” Fallis said.

The restored airplane took its first flight on March 1 and will be back in the air over Baton Rouge at 6 p.m. this afternoon.