Group Hopes To Display Plane By Mid-September

If all goes according to schedule, Michigan's K.I. Sawyer Heritage Air Museum will soon be home to a Convair F-106 "Delta Dart" fighter that is now being restored by a small group of volunteers from the 87th Air Division, and members of the "Sawyer Six" project.

The group -- named for the Delta Dart's more common moniker, the "Six" -- has worked for years to bring the plane to K.I Sawyer, the former Air Force Base in Marquette County that is now home to the museum. The volunteers hope the Delta Dart will help preserve the history of the former Cold War defense base, which is now home to Sawyer International Airport.

"With Sawyer closed, the history is disappearing,  and it's disappearing in a hurry," said volunteer Lee Nellist to Marquette's WLUC-TV. "The group of us didn't want that to happen. We want it to be here so that our great grandchildren and so on will know what the history of K.I. Sawyer was."

K.I. Sawyer AFB was decommissioned in September 1995, with personnel relocated to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana and North Dakota's Minot AFB.

The Sawyer Six group hopes to have the Dart fully restored by August 15... and ready for its dedication outside the museum one month later.

FMI: www.kishamuseum.org/F106RestorationProject.htm