PPG to Donate Materials for EC-135C Aircraft Restoration
SYLMAR, CA – PPG has donated a boom operator compartment side window and will donate military aircraft coatings to the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate in Ashland, Nebraska, for restoration of an EC-135C aircraft that was one of the last to fly as the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command’s “Looking Glass.” For retired U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Michael Holloway, command-and-control airplane AF-38049 was the first Looking Glass mission on which he flew. Now a PPG employee, Holloway proposed the idea for the window donation to PPG, and the company decided to donate the coatings, too.
“Upon examination of my flight records I discovered that 049 was my very first Looking Glass Mission on Nov. 11, 1987,” said Holloway, a production employee at PPG’s Huntsville, Alabama, aircraft transparencies plant where the heated window was made to replace a broken one. “Like most Looking Glass missions, it was 8.3 hours in duration, and we took off from and returned to Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. Over my three years as a crew member of the Looking Glass, I flew 222 sorties and accumulated 1,910 hours of flight time, and 21 of those sorties were aboard 049.”