Moroccan MiG-17 Static Restoration Completed at the March Field Air Museum

Over the last several years, the March Field Air Museum in Riverside, California has been retrieving aircraft from across the western half of the United States for restoration and display at their extensive collection parallel to the runway where F-16s, KC-135s, and C-17s can be regularly seen taking off for or landing from routine flights nearly every day. One of the latest of these restoration projects to have been completed is the museum’s newly-acquired Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 (NATO reporting name ‘Fresco’). Having been obtained from the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA, the MiG is now on display alongside the museum’s other MiG fighters. 

Manufactured as MiG-17F c/n 1406016, this aircraft was delivered from the Soviet Union to the Royal Moroccan Air Force with the code CNA-FJ (later to become 10-1FJ), and would serve the Moroccan Air Force until 1983, when the now surplus fighter was brought to the United States. The effort to bring the MiG to America was launched by the American Fighter Aces Association, who were greatly assisted by former President of the AFAA and Korean War jet ace Major General Frederick C. “Boots” Blesse and by Colonel Major Mohammad Kabbaj, Chief of Staff of the Royal Moroccan Air Force. The transfer also received the personal approval of King Hassan II, and the aircraft was then disassembled and loaded into a C-130 Hercules. 

From there, the MiG-17 was placed on display by the AFAA at the Champlin Fighter Museum at Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona. Originally displayed in its Moroccan colors, it was later repainted to represent a MiG-17 of the North Vietnamese Air Force. It remained on display alongside the rest of the Champlin Fighter Museum’s collection until the museum’s closing in 2003. With that, the majority of the CFM’s collections would be absorbed by the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. The former Moroccan MiG soon became one of the museum’s outdoor exhibits, where the Pacific Northwest coastal climate was not very conducive to the overall state of the aircraft, and the museum began looking to find a new home for their MiG-17. 

By November 2023, restoration department manager Alex LaBonte and Greg Stathatos of the March Field Air Museum’s restoration department were able to arrange the transfer of the MiG-17 to Riverside, and drove a truck trailer up to Seattle to retrieve the MiG. LaBonte reported that the four wing attachment bolts to the aircraft were among the most challenging aspects of the disassembly process, as they were so thoroughly rusted that they each had to sawn in half to get the wings off the fuselage for shipping. After that labor-intensive work was done, the disassembled Fresco was placed on the trailer and after a 28-hour drive, the crew safely arrived at the MFAM with their new aircraft. With the wing bolts having been reproduced in the restoration shop, the aircraft now sits on its landing gear once more, and is now repainted in its original Moroccan colors based on photographs of the aircraft both while in RMAF service and at the CFM in Arizona. 

The museum already has a Polish-built Lim-5 (Polish Air Force (Sily Powietrzne Rzeczypospolitej Polskie; SPRP) serial number 1605) on display, and 10-1FJ has now been placed between it and the museum’s MiG-19 (NATO reporting name ‘Farmer’). The re-arrangement to the museum’s row of MiGs means visitors can now see a Czechoslovakian-produced CS-102 (MiG-15UTI trainer), two MiG-17s (one built in Poland and one built in the USSR), a MiG-19, a MiG-21 formerly of the Czechoslovakian Air Force, and a MiG-23, another Czechoslovakian MiG now painted as an Iraqi Air Force example.

However, the MiG-17 was not the only jet trucked down from the Museum of Flight to the March Field Air Museum. In April 2024, as the MiG-17’s restoration was well underway in Riverside, the restoration team retrieved a Lockheed P-80/TV-1 Shooting Star that had been sitting in the Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center at Paine Field in Everett, just north of Seattle. This aircraft is currently awaiting restoration, and once some of the museum’s other projects have been completed and are placed on display, it will have its own turn in the restoration hangar, and will also be the subject of an article on this site. For more information, visit March Field Air Museum website.

Adam Estes

Raised in Fullerton, California, Adam is pursuing a Bachelor's degree in History. Fascinated by aviation history from a young age, he has visited numerous air museums across the United States, including the National Air and Space Museum and the San Diego Air and Space Museum. He volunteers at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino as a docent and researcher, gaining hands-on experience with aircraft maintenance. Known for his encyclopedic knowledge of aviation history, he is particularly interested in the stories of individual aircraft and their postwar journeys. Active in online aviation communities, he shares his work widely and seeks further opportunities in the field.

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