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Re: Grumman Wildcat
Much better. Did not mean to come across as overly critical and apologies if I did so. I go by those F4F panels several times a day, so the color in your original of #23 jumped out at me as having, perhaps, a little too much green. I really like the VF-3 #11 profile . . . I’ll keep a copy, if you don’t mind.
I like what you did to stabilize the color on the picture of the panel, makes it look a little fresher. The panels I have spent at least six months in active service, including a three-month sojourn on Guadalcanal.
The plane that contributed the panels, b/n 11985, first shows up in my father’s pilot’s logs on 3 Feb 1943, although others from the 119xx series appear as far back as 18 December 1942 with 11942. This was while VF-11 was at Puuene Field, NAS Maui, having arrived there after leaving NAS North Island on 23 October 1942 aboard USS Long Island. Air Group 11, including VF-11, was scheduled to deploy aboard USS Hornet, replacing Air Group 8, but due to that ship sinking on 27 October the Air Group was beached at Puuene Field on 3 November.
So, sometime between 3 November and 3 February, b/n 11985 was assigned to VF-11. I know it does not appear on the list of F4Fs transported from North Island aboard USS Long Island, so it had to have come out later. The squadron left Pearl Harbor, again on USS Long Island, on 18 February 1943 and flew into Nandi, Fiji on 6 March. The next day b/n 11985 became my father’s permanently assigned mount and he flew that plane almost exclusively from then through the end of VF-11’s Guadalcanal deployment.
The Squadron left Nandi on 25 April for a 4-hour hop to Espiritu Santo and, then, the next day, flew another 4-hour hop up to Guadalcanal. On the 27th the squadron flew its first CAP mission for two hours over the Henderson Field area. The squadron operated in the Solomons until 11 July, the last mission being a 3.6-hour routine patrol in the Rendova area. The next day the squadron flew from Fighter I back to Espiritu Santo.
They left their F4Fs there at the Turtle Bay fighter field when they went back stateside at the end of the July. My father went down to the local junk pile and pulled the matching panels off a wrecked F4F and used them to replace the insignia panels on his #11985 which have stayed in his, and now my, possession ever since.
By 14 July, my father and others from VF-11 were already cavorting about the skies over Espiritu Santo in nice new F6Fs (I believe they belonged to VF-33, just entering the theater). He flew five F6F flights before departing for California, including a mock dogfight with a F4U piloted by a fellow named Ken Walsh on 21 July.
Oh, one other thing, wheel covers should be non-spec blue grey, too. Re-check the photo where they’re folding the wing on #1. Blue-grey wheel covers were pretty much the standard factory paint job on F4F-4’s.
Regards,
Rich
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