Warbird Information Exchange

The Sierra Nevada Mountain Corsair was recovered by a team led by Bob Bishop back around 1991. Before Bishop started the actual recovery, he had to jump through hoops with the US Forestry Service since the wreck was located in a sensitive wildlife area. As part of the agreement, the US Forestry Service was able to provide all of the relevant information and paperwork on the plane. It was well known by that time that the crash was that of an FG-1D, but in the end, the info Bishop received was for an F4U-4 wreck that had apparently crashed in the same general vicinity. That was a goof on the USFS's part though, not Bishop's. They didn't want to push their luck at that point, so they went ahead with what they had. As a result, the actual Bureau Number for the plane is not known. One day I'll scour through all of the FG-1D crash reports to try and match one with the general location of the wreck, but as it is I'm totally loaded up for the next couple or three months.

Rob Mears post on another thread...



...reminded me about this particular Corsair. I believe it was the one which the Reilly shops in Kissimmee built the new spar for. In the end the project was sold and I believe it was going to be parted out. This was two years ago now. Did that infact happen? Any chance it is still an intact project now stashed away in a barn?

Mike

Once the plane was recovered, Bob Collings bought it and paired it up with his F4U-5NL (124692) restoration project. After it had lent all of the necessary bits and pieces to that project, the remainder of the wreck was purchased by John Silberman as the basis for the infamous "Kissimmee Corsair" project. As we all saw with that restoration, most of the wreckage ended up serving as patterns.

Of course today it's stored at Breckenridge, Texas lending parts to the restoration of the ex-Pardue F4U-4 (97302), after which it is scheduled to be donated to the Vought Heritage Museum as the basis for a restoration to static display.