Wildcat at Oshkosh – my caption
General Motors Eastern Division manufactured Grumman FM-2 Wildcat c/n 5877, serial 5833, registered N5833. It originally carried Navy BuNo 86819, and was an example of the ultimate version, being only 154 from the end of the 4,777 strong production run in August 1945.
It crashed in 1955 while flying as a crop sprayer for Butler Aviation of Redmond, Oregon. The rebuild project took many years and the airframe passed through the hands of several owners. While with the Yankee Air Corps at Chino it was registered N5833 in August 1983. It was returned to the air on April 24, 1987 by Air Group One at Ramona, California. It spent a short while in the hands of Military Aircraft Restoration Corporation at Chino before passing to the Confederate Air Force. The aircraft had been purchased by Col. Bob Reiss and donated to the CAF. It is now registered to the American Airpower Heritage Flying Museum and based at Camarillo.
The aircraft seems to have been repainted from its former scheme which were the colours of VOC-1 as worn aboard the escort carrier USS Wake Island CVE-65 in June 1945 while under the command of William F. (Bush) Bringle. As such the aircraft wore the markings of Carrier Division 23 which are white below the tail, a single yellow band round the rear fuselage and each wing, and white patches on the outer rear half of the upper starboard wing and lower port wing. An interesting addition was the marking ‘USS Carl Vinson’ (CVN-70) on the rear fuselage recognising the aircraft’s operation from this carrier during the Fleet Week celebrations in 1995 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII. The pilot on that occasion was Dave Morss who was also the display pilot for the Wanaka Airshow when the aircraft spent a short period in New Zealand.
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