Warbird Information Exchange

...Just tryin' to get some attention to the post ...

In the late '50's early 60's time frame, there was an F6F in a park in Passaic. Long shot I know, but does anyone have any info on it or have any pictures?

I was born in '53, so I probably knew it was a Hellcat because I'd just bought the Monogram kit. We drove by the plane every time we visited my grandmother who lived in Clifton and then Garfield. We lived in Pompton Plains, in Morris county, if that helps identify the main road going by the park the plane was in.

There were six of us crammed into the Chev, and several sibs were in diapers so I get why Dad was always in a hurry to keep going, and why "next time, Mike" never happened, and I was waaaayyyy too young to protest as much as I wanted to not stopping to check it out.

Also, way up, to a six year old, on a hill or bluff overlooking the park was a Second War anti tank cannon and a flag pole that always flew the American flag, if that helps identify the park.

Now, there was a light tank in a park in Garfield but that park isn't the one that had the Hellcat.

Hope this makes sense to someone in WIX land; it would be fun to nail down some specifics to a long ago childhood memory.

Thanks!

Those childhood F6F memories can be hard to prove sometimes.

As a 9 or 10 year-old kid I used to play on a Hellcat that sat in a small base green near the Commissary at Moffet Field in California in 1964-65 at least. It too disappeared and few remember it. I used to make an annual ritual of posting here about it asking for photos, conclusive facts on its fate, etc. Nobody knew much. Finally two photos came forth, I guess at least one of which showed it at Miramar in about 1974. From there I still don't know for sure where it went.

The F6F-5 is said to be Bureau #79669, Construction # A-10814

The photos that surfaced showed a dark blue F6F with two white checkers big on the vertical and rudder and smaller on the wingtips. There was a large "35" on the fin, and this under the stab:

F6F
1158

It had a white cowl ring. Good looking airplane.

Anyway, not trying to hijack your thread, but after years of asking I haven't got much more than this on my Hellcat. Who knows maybe your F6F is the same one?

At least in my experience, the plane in a park scenario tends not to have a happy ending.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, we used to have an F7U in Wheaton Regional Park (I believe it may have even been a YF7U, IIRC) and an FJ-1 in Cabin John Regional Park up until 1980. I was hoping that once they were removed from the parks that they were sitting in the back of one of the storage yards. Sadly, that wasn't the case as both were scrapped.

When my family used to live outside of San Francisco back in the mid-70s, I remember driving along the Suisun Bay and seeing row upon row of Fletcher and Gearing class destroyers laid up in reserve or awaiting scrapping.

Good luck with your search!

I grew up in Passaic (early 1960s), and remember playing on some kind of Navy plane, but I don't remember
if it was a Hellcat or not... There is a picture of my sister and me playing on whatever this thing was in one
of our family picture albums (finding that picture / album would be a chore though...). I just called my Mom
and she said it was in Clifton Park (maybe Google will be helpful with that info).

Bela P. Havasreti