Possible spy plane
getting new role
with Kentucky
students
Written by
Larry Muhammad
lmuhammad@courier-journal.com 7:25 PM, Mar. 27, 2011|
The small plane's logbook lists dozens of
flights from Lahore, Pakistan, to Karachi,
Delhi and Calcutta, India, in the 1950s,
and its current owner, a La Grange
businessman, believes it was a spy plane.
Now the vintage Cessna 195A —
disassembled and shipped to the United
States when it was bought in 1993 — is
being put back together and made
airworthy by high school students in a
Kentucky aviation program.
“It's going to be like a giant jigsaw puzzle
that your life depends on,” said Sam
McCalla, a Frankfort Independent School
sophomore who will work on the aircraft.
Jacob Alvey, an Oldham County High School
senior who also will help reassemble the
plane, said, “This is going to be an
adventure because we're planning to fly it
at air shows, and the quality of work that it
requires is going to be a good learning
experience.”
They are among 200 students from 12
public schools working with the Kentucky
Institute for Aerospace Education, a
Frankfort-based nonprofit that introduces
youngsters to aeronautical engineering and
aircraft maintenance by teaching them to
design, repair and fly airplanes.
The institute has seven planes,
experienced flight mechanics and aviators
among its volunteer instructors,
partnerships with the University of Kentucky
College of Engineering, Kentucky
Department of Aviation and other agencies,
and hangars at the Capital City Airport in
Frankfort.
“Working on the Cessna 195A will be a
great project for our future aircraft
mechanics,” said institute director Tim
Smith, “and once the airplane is flying, it
will draw much interest in the aviation
community.”
Manufactured between 1947 and 1954,
the 195A was one of the first Cessna
planes built of aluminum and served the
Army, Air Force and Air National Guard as
a light transport and utility aircraft. It was
marketed to civilians primarily for business
use.
Neil Kaufman, the businessman donating
the plane to the institute, said his late wife,
Sharon, bought it for him after a friend
working for a U.S. government agency
overseas found it in a hangar in Lahore.
“I have pictures of the engineers who
disassembled the plane in Pakistan,” said
Kaufman, an aviation buff, longtime
commercial pilot and vice president of
Lesco Design and Manufacturing, which
makes conveyor equipment for the auto
industry. “They built crating out of scrap
wood and put this thing in a container and
sent it to the U.S.
“This plane was kept ready for flight for I
don't know how many years, but very little
time — under 600 hours — was actually
spent flying it. And what it looks like from
the logbook is that it was used for spying
on India.”
The logbook, one of several documents
Kaufman has connected to the aircraft,
recorded many round-trip flights from
Pakistan to India between 1951 and 1956,
some marked “uneventful,” by the Lahore
Flying Club.
“That's how they disguised it, but
apparently they were flying around India to
see if there was ground activity,” Kaufman
said.
Now the plane is in pieces, meticulously
organized and stored on Kaufman's
sprawling residential property in La
Grange: the fuselage, landing gear, engine
and propeller in a storage trailer; seats
and cabin paneling in a garage; wings and
scores of smaller parts in cabinet drawers
in a large work shed.
“I worked on the airplane for better than
10 years, trying to restore the thing to 100
percent, doing everything myself,” Kaufman
said. “Now I'm pushing 63, and if I spent
another 10 years, I'd be lucky to fly it.
That's why I'm donating it to a place that
will restore it, keep it and fly it, and it will
be worth something when they're done with
it.”
Smith said the restoration will take three to
five years and will involve sorting out
hundreds of parts, connecting wings to the
fuselage, installing the engine, rigging
control cables, making sure the electrical
systems function properly, working section
by section.
“We've put together teams of our best
students, the ones most interested in
aircraft maintenance, and we'll be
accomplishing three objectives by receiving
the airplane,” Smith said. “It will be close to
Neil, it will fly again and not sit in a
museum, and its restoration will be
completed by students working alongside
adults in the aviation industry.
“We're bringing to life an airplane that has
been dead since 1956. That's what our
student teams are ready to embark upon.”
Reporter Larry Muhammad can be reached
at (502) 582-7091.
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