7/10/2011
By TIM UNRUH Salina Journal
TIPTON -- Ken Hake spent his boyhood developing passions for building and inventing things.

The Tipton entrepreneur moved on to immerse himself in reproducing aircraft, nearly from scratch.

Pulling from a love of flight, World War II history and his favorite airplane, Hake, 78, developed a business some two decades ago. He's about to bid adieu to that avocation -- the P-40 Warhawk.

"It's a labor of love," he said while gazing over a near-finished shell of the aircraft -- his second and last -- in a modest downtown Tipton shop.

"It's been fun," Hake said. Also, "very profitable."

The project evolved from his years as founder and manager -- beginning in 1957 -- of Kent Manufacturing, a maker of farm tillage equipment that was sold to Salina-based Great Plains Manufacturing about a decade ago. His son, Kent Hake, manages the plant today.

Ken Hake also spent time designing and building television towers, and during nights and weekends while in the tillage-making business, he restored Army Jeeps. The last one sold for $60,000, he said.

Among his Jeep customers are King Michael and Queen Ann, royalty of the former country of Romania. The couple are living in exile in Switzerland.

Even as a little boy

The private pilot and U.S. Navy veteran was enamored with flight since he was in grade school, where he read about the P-40 and the Flying Tigers unit that fought in the World War II. Nose cones of their aircraft were painted with a shark's mouth.

"It was the best fighter we had at the beginning of World War II," Hake said.

He first restored a 1943 Stearman trainer. Completed in the 1990s, the biplane is in his hangars north of Tipton, along with an L-4 WWII spotter plane.

Next was a transition to the P-40, building an exact reproduction. To do that, Hake needed parts, and plans.

Full of bullet holes

Starting about 20 years ago, he acquired pieces of the aircraft -- many decaying, some full of bullet holes -- salvaged from the Aleutian Islands in the northern Pacific Ocean, and more from a collector in Russia. They were shipped to the United States. In one tail section, his workers found a 50-caliber shell casing, dated 1943.

Hake bought an original set of blueprints from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Drawing on his sheet metal experience, Hake taught himself how to form the war plane out of aluminum.

With up to three hired helpers, mostly skilled sheet metal workers from the tillage equipment plant, Hake set to work in the 1990s, first in his garage.

"We had to make the hard tooling to press it out," he said. Step one was the stringers, or longerons, that form the skeleton.

"Anything with a compound curve," proved to be especially challenging, Hake said, especially the cowling that forms the nose of the aircraft.

As they mastered a certain piece, Hake and company made extras and sold them to others building airplanes.

Difficult, but fun work

It was difficult work, but Hake and his assistants enjoyed every second, right down to the rivets (more than you can count) that riddle the fuselage.

"One part at a time," said Larry Gillette, 71, of Tipton. Retired from Kent Manufacturing, he hired on with Hake's new KHK Company, to help with the Jeep restoration and the first P-40.

"It's keeping history alive," Gillette said. "If somebody like Kenny doesn't do this, it's all lost."

Hake's goal was to construct an aircraft that meets exact specifications. Hake said the projects are at least "95 percent" perfect.

The project wouldn't have been possible without "great help," through the years, Hake said. Among them was his wife, Marcella, who died of cancer six years ago.

"She stood by me and did all of my bookwork," Hake said.

They did it 60 years ago

Progress is slow and tedious, admitted Gary Sloggett, 63, of Hunter, but it has to be easier now than during the war years, when an army of workers -- most of them women -- churned out three to four P-40s a day at the Curtiss-Wright plant in Buffalo, N.Y.

"They did it 60 years ago," he said.

The help of a couple of youngsters has been priceless. Hake has plans for Sloggett's 8-year-old grandson, Cade Richards. He's just the right size to crawl inside of the fuselage to hold rivets while they're fastened. Hake's grandson Braden Hake, of Tipton -- now in his 20s -- did the same while the first P-40 was under construction.

Then the word got out

Ken Hake planned all along to keep the first P-40, but word of his work spread. A buyer, Ron Fagen, of Granite Falls, Minn., found his way to Tipton, determined to make a purchase.

Hake quoted him a price, and it wasn't long before Fagen took possession of the P-40.

Because Hake doesn't have the official Federal Aviation Administration ratings to make an aircraft flight ready, Fagen hired someone else to complete the project. Hake supplied the engine, propeller and other necessary gear, but someone else had to install it. Still another professional handled the custom paint job. Machine guns came later, Hake said.

Fagen entered the P-40 in the 2006 Experiment Aircraft Association AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis., billed by the website as the "World's Greatest Aviation Cele--bration." This year's AirVenture is July 25 through 31.

Fagen's P-40 won the grand championship. He later sold the aircraft for "a lot of money," Hake said.

He also sold the restoration business to Fagen.

The second and final P-40 is destined for a buyer in Colorado. He plans to have it finished by the end of this year. After that, the operation in Tipton is likely to close, Hake said.

Thrill of a lifetime

While he doesn't own a restoration of his favorite airplane, Hake said he was able to fly a dual-controlled P-40 that he made parts for, last summer in Modesto, Calif. His friend and the owner is an acrobatic pilot.

"We did barrel rolls and all of that," Hake said. "Having control of a 1,500 horsepower Allison engine, peeling through the air, was the thrill of my life."

Meanwhile, Hake is out to "find something else" to occupy his time.

n Reporter Tim Unruh can be reached at 822-1419 or by email at tunruh@salina.com.

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