I was told a story about one of the Hicks & Lawrence Avengers by a friend who used to work there, and I think this
TBM's history fits the story.
Apparently this Avenger was written off during the forced landing in 1972, and Merv Hicks decided to simply leave the airframe out in the wilderness. When a museum was looking to recover her years later, they phoned up Merv and asked him if he wanted to sell it. As he had no intention of recovering it, he simply gave them the title to the
TBM.
A little while later, they called Merv back and asked "Did you guys recover the engine after the crash?"
"Umm...no..."
"Well, the engine is missing."
It turns out that a few years after the crash, two brothers went out in their canoe in order to find the mystery 'Avenger in the Forest'. They were successful in locating it, and for some reason decided that they wanted the engine. So for the rest of that summer, they disassembled the R-2600 piece by piece and brought it home via canoe, as that was their only means of getting to the crash site. At the end of the summer they had a complete engine in their garage.
Now fast forward a number of years when the museum is trying to recover the rest of the
TBM airframe. Word spreads and the brothers eventually come forward a little while later and offer the engine to the museum, as they really have no use for it and figure it should go with the
TBM. They assumed that the airframe would never be recovered but were glad to be proved wrong.
Not sure how you could verify if it's true or not, or even if it was indeed this
TBM, but it makes for a great story!