Warbird Information Exchange

Hi everybody!
There is an interesting photo of 2 TBF-1 flying over the ocean in the polish monograph Grumman/Eastern TBF-TBM Avenger, part 1 (AJ Press, 2001) :

The photo is dated "second half of 1943", which is basically correct based on the red outlined national insignia. The a/cs are still in the 2-tone camo with overpainted NI in 2 of the old positions. I guess the 2 remaining insignia on the wings (top and bottom) have the white bars, but they are not outlined. As per the above mentioned book these are some training squadron Avengers. The partially overpainted old codes A7 and A9 (in yellow) are still visible and the new codes S8 and S9 are already applied in white.
Does anybody have the information which training unit is this and when was the transition made from A to S code letter?
Thanks in advance!

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Yves Marino

Gentlemen,
Looking for some more information about the above photo I came through another one (this time even in color!), showing the same style of alphanumeric code:

Above is the photo as I saw it for the first time in the www. The code on the wing is almost non visible. With some photoshoping (I didn't go too much in restoring the photo, but just making it a little bit clearer) the code A8 came to the light:

The fuselage number is A8 too, but there is also another one, probably written with chalk and it seems to me it's S2 or S3:

The national insignia is overpainted in the same fashion as on the first 2 a/cs. It's easy to think this might be an "Avenger" from the same unit.
Since the plane is shown on a carrier deck, could this be an operational a/c rather than a training one? Or maybe from an OTU?
AFAIR the 2 freshwater carriers "Sable" and "Wolverine" in Lake Michigan had some TBF's. There is a very good thread in this forum with many photos, but all the "Avengers" are coded with T (I guess for torpedo bomber) and the "Dauntless" e.g. are coded with B...
Or could the alphanumeric codes A* and S* be local markings from the Pacific?
Like with the "Avenger" below (obviously from a later period), coded S83 and named "Queen of Rabaul":

Cheers!

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Yves Marino

For what it is worth, there is an illustration of a TBM-1 with the red surround national insignia with a large yellow "E16" overlapping the front bar and the same "E16" in large letters on top of the right wing. The color illustration is in the Squadron/Signal No. 82 TBM/TBF Avenger in action booklet on page 25. The caption reads "A TBM-1 (BuNo 24737) from USS MISSION BAY (CVE-59) carries the Red bordered national insignia used between June and October of 1943." I don't know the source of their info.

Randy

Randy, thank you for your input!
Yes, this is the a/c below:

The photo was made during some advanced training cruise in the Central Atlantic in November/December 1943. I think that the red border here is already overpainted in blue, but this is not so important - it's the same a/c as on the profile in the S/S book. The yellow alphanumerics are the same style as those above. I have seen another "Avengers" with similar markings, but different letters too.
In this very interesting thread in the forum one can see several TBF's with white alphanumerics and all of them are a/cs from composite or other operational units.

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Yves Marino

A couple cleaner shots of those Avengers.

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“Knowing what’s right, doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”

Mark, thank you for the photos with a much better quality!
Do you know what is their source (or the archive they are copied from)?

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Yves Marino

Your very welcome. National Museum of Naval Aviation archives.

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“Knowing what’s right, doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”

Thank you again!
In any case on the photo with the 2 TBF-1s the national insignia on the wings with the added white bars, but without border (as I suggested in my first post) are clearly visible for me now.
There is also a two-digit number on the tail of A9 - looks to me like 33, that could be an older marking too.

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Yves Marino