![]() “Farming, you’re always fixing stuff, so I taught myself how to weld. “When I got out of the Army, I farmed a little bit with my daddy,” he says. Harrington has been fabricating things all his life, beginning with homemade airplane and train models when he was a boy. Has he ever thought about learning to fly himself? “I thought about it, I laughed about it, and I forgot about it,” he says. I had jump status for 20 years and done over 100 jumps. I jumped out of C-119 Flying Boxcars back in the sixties. “I’ve flown in some light airplanes, but I like the big planes, like the C-130 and -141 and -123, Caribous. I was also in a Nike Ajax unit, surface-to-air missiles to shoot down planes. ![]() “I just got military on my mind,” he says. ![]() Army, the Reserve, and the National Guard, much of it as a paratrooper. Harrington comes by his fascination with airplanes thanks to a 30-year career in the U.S. It’s a whole lot safer to do it in that thing.” “I’d fly over the Channel when I was here by myself. His next project was a Messerschmitt Bf 109E, which he completed in 2017 and used as a personal dream machine. “I wanted to cover it and keep everybody off, but the kids got on it,” he says. His first life-size replica, built in 2012, was a Curtiss P-40N, which now sits in shambles, a broken-down exhibit at the local airport. Harrington has indeed had time to practice. You pick up a lot of stuff as you go along-how to do things.” I found a way to use tin cans as housings for the phony gauges, and I use stamps to put the numbers on them. “I got pictures of the real cockpit, and I made it just as close as I could. My mother’s house several years ago had a new roof put on it, and I used the tin from the old one to cover the plane.” Harrington’s Oscar even has a convincing cockpit. “I framed the plane with welded light metal conduit. “Most of my parts come from Lowe’s,” he says. Building it out of welded electrical tubing, pizza pans, kitchen mixing bowls, Ball jar lids, lawnmower parts, pork-and-bean cans and “pieces of my mama’s roof,” Harrington explains in a raspy Carolina accent thick enough to bottle as barbecue sauce. You’ll have to ask Zeb Harrington, who in fact is building the backwoods version. The Oscar was often called “the army Zero,” and a very effective World War II fighter it was.īut how did this one get to rural North Carolina, since only about a half dozen Oscars are known to exist, all in museums or under restoration? If you’re really sharp, you might recognize it as a Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa, code-named Oscar. ![]() Learn more….Cruise Google Earth over the piney woods of North Carolina around the tiny community of Moncure, and if you’re lucky, you will fly over an astonishing sight: a silvery Japanese fighter, big red meatballs atop its wings, half hidden under trees in a ramshackle backyard. The plane made appearances in three films: “Midway,” “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and “Baa Baa Blacksheep.” It is already booked for several airshows in 2019. When he died earlier this year, Prescott said he wanted to ensure the Jackson was a Navy veteran and aircraft collector, and He bought the planeįrom Douglas Jackson, the owner of an independent plane brokerage firm. Prescott is a pilot and the CEO of Integra Optics, aįiber optic products supplier based at the airport. Sits a replica aircraft whose past life included Canadian militaryĭavid Prescott is restoring the replica TORA 101 trainingĪircraft, which is still in excellent condition but not yet ready to The … more Buy photoĬOLONIE - Inside a hangar at Albany International Airport Tora 101, a Japanese Zero movie replica owned by Integra Optics CEO David Prescott, sits in a hanger at Albany International Airport where is being restored on Friday, Dec. Next up, the plane will be used to educate the public about Pearl Harbor and the lasting impact that attack had on World War II. Replica aircraft whose past life included Canadian military service and COLONIE - Inside a hangar at Albany International Airport sits a ![]()
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