Who flew these WWII Fighters?

[dragon53]

Does anyone know the pilots who flew the following World War II fighters?

1. F6F Hellcat, "White 2" VF-27, USS PRINCETON




2. F2A Buffalo, VMF-221

[The_Helicopter_Pilot]

I can't tell you about the F2A but as for the hellcat there was no VF-27 609-S2 cat mouth hellcat so there is no pilot.

[binder001]

I don't have my book right here, but I believe that VMF-221 were among the defenders of Midway and still had F2A's.

[dragon53]

BINDER001,

Yep, I posted this question on another message board. To make a long story short, another poster and I researched the Buffalo in question. It appears that there were two Buffaloes with the same fuselage markings, "2-MF-13" from VMF-221. One was at Midway and the other remained in Hawaii. The Midway Buffalo was flown by Kirk Armistead who received a medal at Midway. The Hawaii Buffalo is the Hobby Master model and finished its career as a trainer in Miami where it was lost in a crash.

None of this is 100% confirmed, but that appears to be the most likely stories.

Originally, I thought the Hobby Master model was flown by Armistead, but the other poster found a bit more information which indicated it was not at Midway.

[dragon53]

BINDER001,

If you have any additional information on VMF-221, particularly the Hobby Master Buffalo shown, I would appreciate anything.

[Dauntless]

The USS Princeton Hellcats have an interesting history. Apparently there's none though of that particular plane, but the whole squadron is posed in front of it in a picture.

The Corgi Predators F6F is on my list of wants. Though they forgot to put the mouth drool on it.

By Midway they painted out the red dot and candy cane rudder on the Buffalo.

[binder001]

By the way, we had a WW2 Helldiver pilot do a Q&A at our local model club. He mentioned that although he had an SB2C that he nicknamed "Lem's Boy" he flew what ever bomber was spotted on deck. The Navy usually didn't keep a particular aircraft with a particular pilot. So a plane may be signed out to a pilot in a Navy squadron, but it may not be the one that he flew.

[Dauntless]

Interesting story on the Helldiver pilots. Wonder if ever the ones slow on their feet got stuck with the lemon of the bunch. There were a few early model SB2C's like that.

Number 2 Hellcat could have gotten lost when after all that turkey shooting, it took just one Judy dive bomber to take out the USS Princeton.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/even ... vl23-l.htm

We know what happened to number 8 at least.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:F6F-5 ... CLV-23.jpg