Constable: 'Caretakers of history' restore World War II plane in suburbs

The small plane was flown by the British Royal Air Force during World War II, sold to a Dutch dentist and then sold again to an American pilot in New Hampshire.

The four-seat, single-engine Fairchild Argus III changed hands a couple of more times over the years, eventually winding up in central Illinois, where a farmer scavenged it for parts.

A pair of suburban aircraft buffs, however, saw a far different future for the one-time warbird and bought the cadaverous remnants and a pile of parts with the dream of restoring the antique plane to its former glory.

“Adventure, here we come,” says Bob Coon, a 74-year-old Warrenville pilot who, with Jim Chybicki, 53, of Mount Prospect, spent the past 17 years painstakingly rebuilding the classic plane. The final touch, fixing a problem with the brakes, proves more difficult than they hoped, scuttling their plan to fly the pristine plane to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, today to celebrate the RAF's 100th anniversary as part of the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture show, which runs through Sunday.

Setbacks and disappointment come with the territory.

“This whole airplane project is a lesson in patience,” Chybicki says from Hangar No. 2 at Bolingbrook's Clow International Airport, where the partners run Midwest Aeronautique, a company dedicated to the preservation of antique aircraft. “Each one of these wings took us over a year.”

Studying old blueprints on record at The Smithsonian, visiting the Royal Air Force Museum in London, chatting with fellow aircraft pilots, owners and enthusiasts who belong to the Fairchild Club, and scouring the internet for information, Coon and Chybicki made painstaking efforts to produce a plane exactly like the original. They won't say how much money they've pumped into the project, but they figure the rebuild has taken nearly 20,000 man-hours of work.

“For the first 14 years, it was a weekend project,” says Coon, who stepped up his airplane work after retiring from a health care career in which he served as administrator or executive director of nursing homes.

They remember seeing the plane for the first time after flying to a little landing strip near Springfield to meet with the owner. “It was a skeleton, not an airplane,” Chybicki says.

Built in the United States in 1943 as a Fairchild Forwarder, the plane was shipped on the SS Samwater to the United Kingdom in September 1944 and flew, often with female pilots at the helm, with the Royal Air Force Auxiliary Transport Authority from a base in Silloth, a port town along the Solway Firth in Cumbria, England. Only 701 were built, fewer than two dozen remain and even fewer still fly.

“Wow. This thing really needs to be saved,” Coon remembers thinking. Coon and Chybicki originally were working with a third partner, Frankfort podiatrist Chris Stinson, who died of cancer at age 51 in 2003. A funny man, Stinson often greeted people with, “What's up, Slappy?” His former partners named their plane “Dr. Slappy” in his memory.

Facing a pile of neglected airplane parts and rotted wood, Chybicki and Coon jumped into the project, just as they did when they were boys building model airplanes out of wood, glue and fabric.

Chybicki, who joined the Marines after high school before becoming an Air Force pilot and mechanic, buys and sells aircraft parts for a living with Prime Air. Coon, who saw combat action while serving as an Army chaplain's assistant in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966, excels at woodworking and sewing.

“We had an airplane that needed both of our talents,” Chybicki says.

The veterans saved two of the original wooden spars in each wing and a wooden back seat tray. They welded the good parts of two damaged control panels to make one good one. The engine, which sat coated in black oil for years, was restored. They replaced the long-gone cotton fabric with a polyester wrap that had to be gently stretched and ironed at three different temperatures, verified by a laser thermometer, at three different times to make it tight without cracking the wood.

At 90 years old, Coon's mother, Bea, who died in 2015 at age 98, sewed fabric for the plane, which has 780 stitches on each wing. She also taught her son how to sew the seats. Using special pliers to hold tiny nails, the men delicately hammered together the mahogany and spruce frame. The original, built when metal was scarce, featured a door handle from a 1941 Ford truck and window handles from a 1939 Studebaker. Coon and Chybicki bought handles to match. They bought a wooden propeller from a company in Florida that duplicated everything, including stickers from Sensenich Bros. of Lititz, Pennsylvania, which built the original prop.

“It's basically a brand-new airplane,” Coon says. “And it runs like a top.”

The wings span 38 feet, 6 inches, while the plane is 27 feet, 3 inches from the propeller to the tail. The Federal Aviation Administration certified the plane to fly.

“We consider ourselves caretakers of history,” Chybicki says.

“We didn't want to restore it and hide it away. We want to share it,” Coon says of their work of art.

“It will go to a museum,” Chybicki says, “if it ever stops flying.”