FAA Corsair II ( JT285 )

[wellss]

I'm looking for aircraft history for this plane. Apparently, it was Bu No 18086 ( the famous Pappy Boyington airplane that he never flew ). Just interested in what happened to this plane. Info probably in Air Britain book, serials JA100 to JZ999 ( I don't have that one ).

[Graham Boak]

The info will not be in the Air Britain serials book because those are for RAF aircraft. It will simply say "To Admiralty", or similar.

It should be in FAA Aircraft of WW2 but all it says is "No information". This book only quotes the BuAir numbers for the batch: I presume that it is the same "Xth a/c" but that does assume the serials were applied in the same sequences as the BuAir Nos. Probably a safe assumption here, for all the good it does in this particular case.

Most of the adjacent serials were seen at RNAY Coimbatore in very early 1944, and were issued to various squadrons, particularly 1830 and 1833 on HMS Illustrious, but it seems likely that JT285 simply never was called for and was scrapped at the end of the war. "No information" is also quoted for JT200, JT213, JT219, JT287, JT303 and JT313 - possibly others in different batches but I haven't checked.