Warbird Information Exchange

The following is from the Pacific Aviation Museum, May newsletter:

"The Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor is proud to announce that we have added an original WWII-era F4F-3 Wildcat fighter to our exhibit collection! The Grumman F4F Wildcat was considered the archrival of the Japanese A6M2 Zero that dominated the skies of the South Pacific during WWII. This beautifully restored and airworthy Wildcat will be an important addition to the museum that will help depict the early battles in the Pacific Theater. There are only 7 of the 285 early model, straight-wing F4F-3 Wildcats manufactured known to exist today, which makes this particular aircraft not only historic, but extremely rare.

"Built in early 1943, the museum's Wildcat (Bureau No. 12296) was assigned to the USS Sable, a training carrier based in the Great Lakes, where it was used to train Navy and Marine Corps carrier pilots flying out of NAS Glenview near Chicago. However, its service in the U.S. Navy would be short lived, seeing only 150 hours of flying time. On June 21, 1943, it was lost in Lake Michigan when it's pilot was forced to ditch the aircraft. The intact Wildcat lay at the bottom of Lake Michigan for nearly 50 years until it was recovered in 1991 and restored to flying condition. It was subsequently purchased by John C. Dimmer of Tacoma, Washington who has flown the aircraft at air shows across the United States.

"The Wildcat was purchased from Mr. Dimmer by the Pacific Aviation Museum in December 2005, while on loan to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The Wildcat is now being prepared for shipment to Hawaii and will soon arrive at its new home inside the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor."

Still irks me that they couldn't have made use of one of the many other Lake Michigan birds still languishing in the NMNA's inventory. Taking on one of those (essentially for free) and performing a minimal static restoration would surely have been more feasible than paying untold hundreds of thousands for one of the few flyers out there.

_________________
Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.com
http://www.robmears.com