Making Oscar Skyworthy Again

Imagine this: A WWII Luftwaffe cadet restoring a Japanese Oscar in Texas.

Ooookay.

But that's just what Herb Tischler and his son, George, are doing at Meacham Field in Fort Worth (TX). They're rebuilding four Japanese Ki-43-IIIa fighters from the rusted hulks of aircraft that originally rolled off the Nakajima assembly lines between 1939 and 1945.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports the project to rebuild "Oscars," as they were known to American soldiers during the war, is underway at the Texas Airplane Factory. The Tischlers already have an impressive record of rebuilding warbirds. Since they started working on warbirds six years ago, projects have included reconstructing five Messerschmitt ME-262s, and four Grumman F3F "Flying Barrels" circa 1936.

"The only F3Fs in existence that can fly came out of this shop," George Tischler said proudly in an interview with the Star-Telegram.

The Oscars are extremely rare, in spite of the fact more than 6,000 of them were built by the Japanese during the war. That made the Hayabusa (Japanese for "Peregrine Falcon") the most widespread fighter-bomber in the Japanese air arsenal.

The Tischlers stress the Oscars being rebuilt in Fort Worth 62 years to the day after Pearl Harbor are not replicas. They're being rebuilt on the basis of wreckage found in northern Japan about ten years ago. The Texas Airplane Factory will build only four of them.

"It wouldn't be fair to the original four owners to make more," said George Tischler.

It's not easy rebuilding the aircraft. Only about two percent of the parts being used are original. No Nakajima powerplants survived the war and the decades that followed, so the Tischlers are using rebuilt DC-3 engines.

There are no plans -- the Nakajima company splintered after the war and none of the blueprints survived, they say. "When you don't have plans, it becomes a challenge," says George, "but it's a neat thing to bring back a piece of history."

Indeed.

So far, the Tischlers and their machinists have put about 100,000 hours into rebuilding the Oscars. They say they need about 20,000 more to finish. They hope to get one of the Oscars in the air within the next couple of months.

So far, one of the Ki-43-IIIa aircraft has a home. It will spend its days at the Tillamook Air Museum in Oregon. The other three are up for sale, at an estimated price of $1.5 million each.

ANN Thanks Chuck Gardner and the tremendously talented folks at the Warbird Resource Group for the use of the construction photos that accompany this article.

FMI: www.tillamookair.com, www.warbirdresourcegroup.org