Warbird Information Exchange

The recent issue of the Shearwater Aviation Museum Society newsletter says they have purchased the last TBM-3E water bomber from FPL in Fredericton, New Brunswick and it will be flown to Shearwater around now to be returned to Royal Canadian Navy colors and then displayed in their museum. 53610 served in the U.S.N. and then the R.C.N. in the 1950s before becoming an ag aircraft with Wheeler Northland, Evergreen and then FPL. Her civil registration is C-FIMR. My attached photo shows her on the far right in Fredericton, New Brunswick, 15 September 1973 with Evergreen. Then she was bare metal with white over the aft canopy, black on top of the cowling and yellow on the wing tips and rudder. Number 01 was on top of the port wing. She is best known as 23 with FPL. R.C.N. side numbers included AB-C and 303.



*mod edit - link fixed*

Do you know who purchased Tanker 13? From what I recall it and Tanker 23 were the last two TBMs at FPL. IIRC, Tanker 13 was in rougher condition than Tanker 23.

FPL Tanker 13 is Bu.#53200 and in 2011 it flew into the Museum Of Mountain Flying in Missoula where it used to fly with Johnson as N9010C/A 13.

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Thank you for posting the link. It sounds like they want to keep #13 as a flyer in its Fire Bombing colors. I think that's great, since without its use as the fire bomber, there wouldn't be anywhere near the number of them still left flying.

23 flew into Shearwater on Thursday, 26 July 2012.
It will be repainted into Royal Canadian Navy colors.
It will NOT fly again but may be run up.
Shearwater Aviation Museum photo.