[17th Miss Regt]

The FM-2 Wildcat

FM-2? The Wildcat was designated F4F. This was a training carrier so maybe this was an older aircraft. Freeper experts please chime in.

[Happy Rain]

My dad was a gunners mate on the USS Wasp (CV-7) and his ship received a couple of squadrons of Wildcats to replace the old Brewster Buffalo's before they were sent to Guadalcanal...which they never reached having been sunk by a Jap sub.

The Wildcats replacing the Buffalo's to him were like the F-14s replacing the F4 Phantoms to me on my old flat top..

[concentric circles]

A successful landing aboard the Sable on Lake Michigan in '45.

[tanknetter]

The annoying thing here is the USN keeps taking the easy wins of recovering aircraft from Lake Michigan.

There are plenty of restored F4Fs and FMs out there. But NOT a single TBD Devastator, which was a big advancement in Naval Aviation when it first entered service, made significant contributions at Coral Sea and went down to tragic glory at Midway.

Four are known to exist. All are under water. One off Miami, another off San Diego and two more in the Gilberts. The one off Miami is a Coral Sea vet.

The Navy should be spending it’s limited recovery assets going after one or more of these. Not mucking around with Frikkin FM2s.

[George Varnum]

A Naval Historian contact sent this link when I fwd him a link to this discussion:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/ac-usn22/f-types/fm2-c.htm

He also mentioned:

“Interestingly, had the war lasted another year, some of the FM-2s flying from escort carriers might well have been replaced by Ryan FR-1 “Fireballs”, an interesting little fighter that had a reciprocating engine (R-1820) in front and a small turbojet in the back. Production and fleet introduction was just getting started when the Japanese surrendered.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FR_Fireball

Too bad there aren’t more of these FM-2s in flying condition - they look like a fun little airplane to fly even if they weren’t a terribly formidable fighter.