Mark Allen recently piqued my curiosity and spurred me to some further Grumman Goose research by posting a photo of a Goose with "invasion stripes" and a national insignia star, but no other identifying markings whatsoever and he said that the photo was labelled on its back saying it was an Army OA-9 in England. The kicker is that my research indicates that there were very few Army OA-9's left actually in service by 1943, much less 1944 prior to D-Day, and those that were still in service (maybe 4 or 5) were stationed far away from England, mostly in the Caribbean and Central or South America, or CONUS. That also includes the 5 later model JRF-6B's that were built for the British but diverted to the US Army prior to delivery.
In researching other Gooses that may have been operated in England, I came up with only 3 (based on the service records in Fred Knight and Colin Smith's book The Grumman Amphibians - Goose, Widgeon, and Mallard) and only 1 of those, JRF-5 serial no. B-58, was built and delivered prior to June 6th, 1944. It's service record is as follows:
JRF-5, BuAer. Serial 37805. Acc 08May44 and del. 09May44; FAW-5 Norfolk; records missing but allocated to Hedron 7, FAW-7 Plymouth, NAF Dunkeswell 04Jly44 having been shipped to the UK as deck cargo on USS Albemarle (AV-5) Allocated to Commander, US ports and Bases, France 12Aug44 (records show location a/o 31Aug44 as ‘unknown’); Hedron 7 FAW-7 Plymouth/NAF Dunkeswell 30Sep44; ComNavEu RAF Hendon July45; ComNavEastLant RAF Hendon Mar47.
The other 2 Gooses, JRF-5's serials B-92 and B-93 (BuAer. serials 84797 and 84798) were not built and delivered until the end of October and early November 1944 respectively.
So, my question is - for how long after June 6th, 1944 (if at all) did they continue to paint "invasion stripes" on Allied aircraft operating in the ETO?
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