The Saratoga Foundation plans to restore for display an F9F Panther jet similar to the one the Boston Red Sox hitter flew during the Korean War.

01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, December 28, 2005

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

From 7,500 feet another pilot announced: "He's on fire and he's coming in!"

The fighter pilot strapped into a plane spewing flames was none other than Ted Williams, baseball hero and a Marine Corps reservist called to fight in Korea despite his celebrity status.

Williams pushed his Panther jet toward the landing strip at a base called K-13; the wheels hit the strip at 200 mph; he stomped the brakes and the flaming plane slid for nearly two miles before he popped the canopy and jumped out.

That August he was back playing left field for the Boston Red Sox, hitting .407 in 91 at bats.

Now two men are teaming up to promote the wartime exploits of Williams and other celebrities called to duty despite their fame. As part of their promotion, the two -- Frank Lennon of Providence and Dave McCarthy of the Ted Williams Museum -- plan to display a refurbished F9F Panther jet of the same vintage that Williams flew.

"Educating kids today means first getting their attention," said Lennon, who said he's a West Point graduate and Green Beret who fought in Vietnam. "Who are the icons of and role models youngsters look up to? For the most part, they are sports stars, entertainers, and other celebrities. By involving recognized names from those fields, we will go a long way toward closing the gap."

The Saratoga Foundation recently bought a Panther jet that had been damaged in a crash landing at an air show near Kalamazoo, Mich.; it is 1 of only 9 Panthers remaining from a production run of 1,300. The foundation plans to bring the plane to Rhode Island and restore it with the same markings that Williams' plane bore: the tomcat logo of Squadron VMF-311.

McCarthy, executive director of the Ted Williams Museum in Hernando, Fla., will loan some of the Hall of Famer's baseball memorabilia for the display.

The F9F Panther -- the first jet-powered fighter to see widespread service with the Navy and Marine Corps -- was a familiar sight in the skies over Rhode Island 50 years ago. Navy pilots stationed at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station learned to fly early versions of the plane, sometimes with disastrous results.

"This was their first jet and they were just learning the ropes," said aviation historian Lawrence Webster, of Charlestown. "So a bunch of guys got killed around here in them."

Early Panthers had trouble with fuel leaks that ignited the engines in midair, causing them to streak comet-like; one crashed in Coventry after a flameout and another in Newport, killing the pilots, Webster said; at least twice Quonset-based Panthers went down after midair collisions over Narragansett Bay.

Lennon is president of the USS Saratoga Museum Foundation Inc., a nonprofit group that has raised more than $3 million of the $10 million it needs to turn the aircraft carrier Saratoga into a floating museum.

The aircraft carrier is currently docked at a Navy pier in Middletown, but the Navy will give the carrier to the Foundation if it raises the money it needs to overhaul the ship as the centerpiece of a military museum. The foundation will dock the ship at a state-owned pier in Davisville if it can raise the $10 million by May 2007.

The foundation also owns the Soviet submarine Juliett 484, which has drawn more than 30,000 customers since opening at Providence's Collier Point Park in 2002.

Lennon said yesterday that the F9F Panther similar to the one Williams flew, along with some baseball memorabilia, will be on public display before the aircraft carrier museum is open, perhaps as early as this spring. The foundation is looking for indoor space in Rhode Island where it can display and work on the plane until the aircraft carrier museum is ready to host it.