Resurrecting Great Park’s military heritage

By SEAN EMERY | THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

IRVINE – Great Park leaders are quietly laying the groundwork for a planned aviation museum through the acquisition and ongoing renovation of several historic airplanes, part of an effort to retain the heritage of the former military base turned central park.

Sneak peaks at the Great Park’s fledgling vintage aircraft collection have become a popular attraction at park events, even as much of the labor-intensive work has taken place largely behind the scenes.

Hundreds of feet of tarmac away from the 50-acres of park and festival space that currently makes up the Great Park, the aviation project’s aircraft collection is housed in one of several large hangars that remain on the now-shuttered Marine Corps Air Station El Toro.

Museum curator Tom O’Hara, a retired U.S. Marine colonel and aircraft restoration expert, is heading up the park’s efforts to honor the military legacy that helped shape Orange County.

“The mission is to capture that heritage and that history, and the relationships between the Marines, the county and the farmland,” said O’Hara, who previously managed the Marine Corps museum’s at the El Toro and Miramar air stations.

The vintage aircraft shown off so far have drawn a passionate and varied crowd, from veterans nostalgic about their service days to younger park visitors just learning the history of aircraft. Park officials say they will continue to display the planes during a series of free concerts at the park in August and September.

“You have to see how the public interacts,” said Larry Agran, an Irvine councilman and Great Park chairman. “Do they require docents? When it comes to restoration, how far do you have to go? Do we want to restore them to flying condition, or only to the point that makes it safe for display for kids and others?”

The renovation efforts kicked off in August 2008, with the arrival of the park’s first vintage aircraft, a 1943 Lockheed PV-1 Ventura. Fixtures at El Toro during the WWII era, PV-1′s were used by the Marines as a night-flight spy plane and fighter.

After its military use, the Great Park’s PV-1 was used to transport executives before being extensively damaged during Hurricane Katrina.

Once it was disassembled and transported from New Orleans to Irvine, Great Park workers began the lengthy process of restoring the PV-1, an effort that will eventually repair the plane’s right wing, fuselage, engine, landing gear and stabilizer.

So far, O’Hara’s team has stripped the insulation from inside the aircraft, removed windows that weren’t true to the aircraft’s original military design, and begun re-paneling the plane with sheet metal, a process that requires thousands of rivets. O’Hara also “scrounged all over the world” to find a new nose, tires and gun turret that will eventually be installed on the aircraft to bring it back to the WWII era design.

“These are fleeting opportunities, because these airplanes become rarer and rarer every day,” O’Hara said.

The next two aircraft arrived last year, after park leaders approved the $85,000 purchase of a 1942 N3N-3 from an ex-Marine who had been stationed at El Toro, and the $159,000 purchase of a 1944 SNJ-5 from a seller in North Carolina.

Great Park leaders have set aside space for the permanent museum. In the meantime, leaders are hoping to introduce base aviation history classes, and are looking into creating a non-profit to raise money for their efforts.

“There is name recognition and a place in a lot of people’s hearts for aviation at El Toro,” O’Hara said.

https://www.ocregister.com/news/park-258267-aircraft-great.html