Warbird Information Exchange

Clovis-area man carefully restores German fighter planeHarold Kindsvater spent more than 10 years on the Messerschmitt Me 109.By Guy Keeler / The Fresno Bee09/26/08 17:02:55During World War II, more than 30,000 German Messerschmitt Me 109 fighter planes darkened the skies over Europe. Most of them didn't survive the war.
But a few live on in museums and hangars around the world. One of them, painstakingly restored by Harold Kindsvater at his ranch in the foothills east of Clovis, will be featured on the Military Channel's new aviation history series, "Showdown: Air Combat."

The episode with Kindsvater will air at 7 p.m. Oct. 12. A film crew visited Central California in early August to interview Kindsvater and photograph his plane, which is stored in a hangar at the Castle Air Museum in Atwater.

"Harold's hard work really shines through in his beautiful and meticulously restored airframe," says Maj. Paul "Max" Moga, host of the show and an F-22A demonstration pilot with the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

The Me 109 was one of the most important fighters in the German Luftwaffe during World War II; it destroyed more planes than any other aircraft.

"It was the workhorse for the German fighter fleet during the early stages of World War II," Moga says. "It was designed for short-range intercept missions, primarily defense of the homeland."

"It was so good in the air you never worried about getting shot down," says Skip Holm, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who has flown Kindsvater's Me 109. "Harold's plane is very close to original. He's done a very good restoration."

Although the plane never flew during the war, Kindsvater used manufacturer's blueprints to reproduce the paint scheme of the Luftwaffe's 26th Squadron, a unit that saw action in North Africa and the Baltic. From nose to tail, the plane looks just like one from the war.

"It took two months to paint it," Kindsvater says.

The detailed paint job includes the German lettering "nicht betreten" (don't step on) and "nicht anfassen" (don't touch) at key points on wings and tail.

Holm, president and CEO of Bear Aerospace in Calabasas, flew Kindsvater's plane to the Experimental Aircraft Association's 2004 convention in Oshkosh, Wis., where it received a judges' choice award in the foreign fighter division.

Kindsvater, a native Fresnan who graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1956, got interested in aviation after he started jumping out of planes in 1963.

Skydiving provided a wonderful rush, he says, but every time he looked at the pilot as he was about to jump, he wondered if it might be more fun to fly a plane. So he quit skydiving, earned his pilot's license and bought his own plane, a Cessna 195.

Kindsvater's fascination with restoring old planes began as a dream. Although he had never served in the military, he thought it would be interesting to fly an old fighter. And he became interested in German planes because of his German ancestry.

In 1978, he bought an Me 108 Messerschmitt at an estate sale in Florida. After three years of work and a couple of trips to Europe to search for parts, Kindsvater got the plane flying and won awards at air shows in Madera and Watsonville.

He added two other planes to his collection -- a Messerschmitt 208 liaison plane and a Storch ambulance plane -- before trading the Storch in 1988 to the Commemorative Air Force, a nonprofit organization that restores and flies vintage military aircraft, for the Me 109.

"It was a basket case," he says, referring to the Me 109's condition. The engine had been removed, and the wings had been taken off, Kindsvater says, adding: "I drove back to Texas and hauled it home."

The plane's airframe was made in Germany and was sent to Spain during the war, but it never got into the air because its Daimler-Benz engine failed to arrive. After the war, it was equipped with a Rolls-Royce engine and became part of the Spanish Air Force, which continued flying Me 109s until 1965.

When the plane's military service ended, it was one of several purchased at auction by a film production company for use in filming the 1968 movie "Battle of Britain." After the film was completed, Texas pilot and airplane collector Wilson Edwards acquired that plane and 10 others in payment for his flying services; Edwards eventually donated it and two others to the Commemorative Air Force.

It took Kindsvater 101/2 years to restore the Me 109. Even with a large collection of spare parts he got when he traded for the plane, he still needed to make three trips to Europe to search for things that were missing.

"I could have made everything myself, but that would have taken longer," he says.

Kindsvater swapped parts with the Luftwaffe Museum in Berlin and with Gunter Leonhardt, director of an air museum in Hannover.

"I wanted original stuff," he says. "About a half-dozen times I hit a brick wall."

But Kindsvater's persistence paid off. A collector in Austria provided four original screws for a panel cover. Kindsvater obtained a clock for the instrument panel on eBay from a man in England who found it at a World War II crash site.

When the restoration work was done, Kindsvater fired up the plane's engine but did not want to risk a takeoff because he feared the 2,000-foot runway at his home was too short.

With the help of some friends from the Experimental Aircraft Association, he took the plane apart, hauled it to the Castle Air Museum and put it back together. English test pilot Charlie Brown flew the restored plane in 2000.

"He stayed in the air for 45 minutes," Kindsvater says. "I could hear him doing stalls, loops and rolls. He said it just needed one minor adjustment to the rudder."

A year later, Kindsvater flew the Me 109 himself. Although he had experience flying the American P-51 Mustang and his Me 108, he knew the Me 109 had a reputation for being hard to handle on takeoffs and landings.

"I wasn't really nervous," he says. "But I used up a lot of runway when I took off. You have to remember the plane is taking you for a ride."

During the restoration project, Kindsvater could barely squeeze into its cramped cockpit. When sitting on top of a parachute, his head touched the top of the canopy. After slimming down from 226 pounds to 200, however, he was able to fit inside with three inches of headroom.

"It fits like a glove," he says.

A transponder antenna is the only visible piece of modern equipment on the plane, he says.

Moga says inspecting vintage planes such as Kindsvater's Me 109 fills him with admiration for World War II pilots.

"I don't know how those guys did what they did," he says. "It must have taken unbelievable guts to go up against other fighters in do-or-die situations. It's eerie. You can almost feel their ghosts in those old planes."