Jet-Age Junk : Oxnard to Remove Old Navy Warplane, Scarred by Playground Battles and Now a Hazard

More than six years in the Navy couldn’t destroy an F-6 Skyray jet fighter, but 25 years in the tot lot of Oxnard’s Colonia Park have taken their toll.

Now the gutted aircraft that once carried missiles is again posing a threat, city officials say. They plan to remove it from a bed of sand near two elementary schools in Oxnard’s barrio and replace it with more conventional playground equipment.

“It’s deteriorated, and there are sharp pieces of metal that children could hurt themselves on,” Assistant City Manager John Tooker said. “We’re making repairs on top of repairs.”

City crews regularly repair the flying machine that was built in 1957 and taken out of service after its left wing was damaged in a landing accident at the Naval Missile Center at Point Mugu in 1963.

Bikers on the Wing

The jagged metal, torn under the pummeling of little feet, waits to snag the fingers, arms and legs of children who slide or flip from the wings into the sand. Broken beer bottles lie in the fuselage, its walls ripped open time and again. And the long, wide wings beckon to a new breed of fighter jocks who ride their bikes on them.

No serious accidents have been blamed on the jet, which has been a neighborhood landmark for two generations of schoolchildren, but city officials believe it is “a significant safety issue,” Tooker said.

Then there’s the aesthetics.

Navy officials described the Skyray as a “sleek, upturned-wing jet” when they mended the plane’s damaged wing and donated it to the neighborhood’s children in 1963 so that they might “be reminded of the forces that created and operated the plane.”

“At that time,” said Ignacio Carmona, a co-leader of La Colonia’s Neighborhood Council, “the plane wasn’t big enough for all the kids who wanted to play on it.”

Now, heavily patched and its blue paint fading, the 45-foot-long hulk with a wing span of 33 1/2 feet looks more like a pair of tattered jeans than a promotional vehicle for the military. Graffiti mar its nose. The cockpit, once open so children could climb inside, has been sealed with metal slabs that have turned orange with rust.

“It’s looking pretty shabby,” Carmona said. He says children have begun to shun the jet and his 19 grandchildren regularly bypass it for the nearby swing sets dwarfed by the jet in the park at Marquita and First streets.

In their heyday, F-6 Skyrays could fly more than 700 m.p.h. They set seven world flight records. But the jet’s past glory probably won’t save it from the scrap heap.

Navy Doesn’t Want It

Point Mugu officials turned down the city’s request to reclaim it.

“As far as we’re concerned, it’s city property, and we don’t want it back,” said Ray Lucasey, a public affairs officer at the Pacific Missile Test Center. “We’d just have to look for a place to put it.”

He suggested to city officials that the Missile Technology Historical Assn., an Oxnard group looking into establishing a naval museum at the base, may welcome the jet. But its members say they wouldn’t want it.

“Missiles are our sole concern,” said Frank Cavanagh, a past president of the group.

Now the city hopes to interest a junk dealer in removing the jet in exchange for the considerable scrap metal that it represents. Tooker said at least one such firm has expressed interest.

In anticipation of that, the Oxnard City Council on Tuesday approved the expenditure of $11,000 for new playground equipment that Tooker predicts will be “more imaginative.”

But try telling that to Ciprano Lopez, a 12-year-old who scaled the jet’s nose to sit on the plane’s spine one recent Sunday.

“Me and my brother,” he said, pointing to a 9-year-old teetering on the plane’s left wing, “pretend that we’re driving this thing. We think that it’s for GI Joes.”