As the silver MiG-17PF streaked across the sky over Lancaster Airport in Lititz with its afterburner glowing, it was hard to believe the jet had once sat in a Polish scrap yard waiting to be crushed.
The Cold War fighter was the highlight of the airport’s Community Days air show in October 2015, flown by pilot Randy Ball for its owner, a retired engineer named Jon who spent 17 years bringing it back to life.
“A funny MiG”
At the end of the Cold War, many former Eastern Bloc military jets were put up for sale. A friend of Jon’s was in Poland buying MiGs when he came across one in a salvage yard.
“He said, ‘It’s a funny MiG, it’s got a funny nose on it,'” Jon recalled during a meal break at the show. He told his friend right away that he wanted that one.
The unusual nose held a radar system, and it turned out the plane was one of the rarest MiG variants of the Cold War. The PF version of the MiG-17 was built as an all-weather interceptor, and few survive in flying condition.
Seventeen years of work
The jet was taken apart during a Polish winter, when “about one-third of the parts fell into the snow,” Jon said. The pieces were packed into a shipping container and eventually arrived at the Port of Baltimore.
Over 17 years, Jon restored the plane in his spare time, with “a lot of help along the way on the heavy stuff.” Its swept wings, set at a 45-degree angle, weigh about a ton apiece, so the project required custom equipment. “You have to build fixtures to support it, to clean and to build certain areas,” he said.
Jon, a mechanical engineer, worked on cars for General Motors for 34 years and also built ships for the Navy. Asked why he took on a MiG, he said simply, “I got bored with cars.”
Few people who started MiG restorations after the Cold War ever finished them. Storage was one of his biggest challenges. “I had to move four times, so finally I built my own hangar and had my own facility,” he said. The jet now lives at Elmira/Corning Regional Airport in New York.
A fast trip to Lititz
Jon and his wife, Beverly, left Elmira by car right after the MiG took off for Lancaster. “He left and was here in 19 minutes and 44 seconds,” Beverly said on the tarmac. “It took us hours.”
The show
Capable of more than 600 mph, the MiG gave Community Days crowds a spectacular display: tight turns, rolls, high-speed passes and a vertical climb that seemed to reach the clouds, climbing at a rate the team put at about 1,500 feet per second.
Ball, a former military fighter pilot who flies for a Wisconsin airline, is known for his love of flying upside down. He flew with a GoPro camera on board, capturing the green farmland of northern Lancaster County spinning below. “He’s gotten the best GoPro video here,” Beverly said.
Even after all the years, Jon admitted to nerves. “It’s great, but I’m nervous every time because it’s such speed,” he said. “It’s still an old airplane and it’s going fast. I’m praying that it comes down safely.”
It did, again, in Lititz.
What’s next
The appearance in Lititz was only the jet’s second show of the season. Afterward, it was headed back to New York for heavy maintenance.
“I’ve got to keep this thing going,” Jon said, “because he wants to take it to Oshkosh next year,” a reference to EAA AirVenture in Wisconsin, the largest air show gathering in the country.
Community Days
Lancaster Airport’s Community Days has long been one of the region’s favorite fall events, mixing vintage and military aircraft with family activities. For many in the crowd, the chance to see a Cold War fighter up close, and then hear its roar overhead, made 2015’s show one to remember.
This story was originally reported by Lynn Rebuck for LititzDailyNews.com in October 2015 and has been updated for our archive.