LANCASTER, Calif. — Today’s official news is, there is no truth to watercooler rumors that the legendary Douglas D-558-II Skyrocket was mysteriously and surreptitiously removed from its pedestal at a construction site at Antelope Valley College.

The rest of the story is that the rare and historically prized aircraft will be taken down within two to four months, potentially reigniting a decades old custody disagreement between competing guardians of aerospace history.

Diane Knipple, head of the AV College Gift Foundation and former career aerospace executive for Lockheed Martin, cleared up any confusion over the status and whereabouts of the sleek, swept-wing, and needle-nosed black and white rocket plane. She said she took a walk around campus the morning of Dec. 7, and there it was, still pointed skyward on the pole.

Addressing questions from Aerotech News about the Skyrocket’s immediate future, Knippel said the aircraft will be transported to Palmdale’s Joseph P. Davies Memorial Airpark restoration hangar. She said when the work is completed, the current direction of the College Governing Board is to return the D-558-II to a new outdoor pedestal on the corner of the campus at Avenue K and 30th Street West.

And it is exposed to weather, vandalism and busy traffic, and the matter of pride in honoring a college donor family’s bequest that continue to divide two organizations, each believing it has the right location of the Skyrocket.

Representatives of the private, non-profit Air Force Flight Test Historical Foundation Museum, under construction along Rosamond Boulevard just outside the main gate to Edwards Air Force Base, contend that displaying the Skyrocket, one of only three ever built, should rationally be protected, preserved, and appreciated by thousands more people in the indoor, climate-controlled museum.

Art Thompson, Executive Board President of the FTHF, said, “We don’t want to be an adversary to those at Antelope Valley College. I’ll support AVC in any way possible. Even if they refuse our proposal to offer a better home for a world of tens of thousands of visitors.

Director of Education and Community Relations for the Flight Test Historical Museum Lisa Brown said, “Our relationship with Antelope Valley College is important and valuable to our STEM education efforts. We understand the significance of the aircraft to the college and support its preservation and display. The college is doing the right thing in going forward with the restoration.”

Retired AVC publicist Steve Standerfer notes this is not the first round in the duel over approaches to preservation. He recalls a first museum run on the Skyrocket during former AVC President Al Kurki’s administration in the 1990s. Quotable Kurki was succinct: “It’s going to stay here.” That was the end of discussion.

Current governing board member Steve Buffalo said in a telephone interview that representatives of the Historical Foundation talked with College President Ed Knudsen and approached the board two or three years ago to make a pitch for moving the Skyrocket to the new museum. Buffalo said the board took no action. Knudson could not be reached for comment.

Buffalo said the primary argument for keeping the aircraft on the AVC campus is to honor a pledge the college made in perpetuity to the family of the late Alden Carter, manager of Flight Test for Douglas Aircraft Company, who donated the Skyrocket even before it was installed and dedicated on the new AVC westside campus in 1963. Buffalo provided a photo of the aircraft on the college annex campus in 1960. He acknowledges that the Skyrocket’s original campus center prominence was a point of pride lost in the modernization. One critic called the former aerospace shrine, “a great piece of inspirational lawn art.”

One of the roadblocks to resolution of the years-long stalemate is the fact that individuals who made agreements decades ago have passed on. The late Edwards Museum Director Doug Nelson had a deal with college, but records of the agreement are missing. Paper trails come up empty.

Unlike most military and government aircraft bound for public display, then and since, Douglas Aircraft Company built the Skyrocket for the Navy, which flew but never owned the aircraft. That loophole avoided the process by which retired or decommissioned aircraft were put on loan to selected government offices and installations for specific durations. Loan agreements were subject to annual audits. For reasons that remain unclear, that didn’t happen with the Skyrocket. Both the museum officials and college trustees are confident their files contain documented evidence of the legitimacy of their claims on the Skyrocket. But for the moment, neither has been able to locate the documents.

In the meantime, the two parties are facing more immediate challenges which some see as impetus to collaborate on paying the expected high costs of restoring an aerospace museum piece. Even the price for something as basic as resurfacing and painting an airframe can easily start at $50,000. Another consideration is the level of difficulty in restoration of an aircraft with wings of aluminum skin and a fuselage constructed of weather-sensitive magnesium. The job involves a level of sophistication that goes beyond cosmetics at a price.

The museum, with 82 aircraft already in its inventory, can only raise and spend money for restoration of aircraft in their possession, and AV College faces financing limitations of its own. Another factor in favor of a compromise is the number of volunteers working in both camps, including notable individuals such as AVC science professor Dr. Les Uhazy, Ph.D, who also serves as first vice chairman of the FTHF Executive Board.

“As I understand it, all of the documents linked to the Douglas Skyrocket are now in the AVC Library,” Uhazy said.

“The President’s Office is now challenged with having the aircraft removed from its current location, restored, and then relocated on the campus,” he continued. “This valuable national treasure plus the documents, have to be preserved. As much as the original gift of the Skyrocket to AVC was in the name of the children of the Antelope Valley, I believe these pieces of aeronautical history should be preserved in the Flight Test Museum at Edwards and part of the museum’s STEM Educational Mission for the Antelope Valley, state and nation.”

The only three D-558-II Skyrockets built remain on display. Aircraft Number NACA 145 is at Antelope Valley College in Lancaster. NACA 143 is currently in storage at Planes of Fame Museum in Ontario, Calif. The second Skyrocket to be built, and the most famous, NACA 144, is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.