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Your photos turned out well Rich. The Millville show was a pleasure. After all, it's all about the people, without them, it's just a bunch of airplanes. I enjoyed the entire airshow group. Tom Duffy, Terry Rush, Jim Vocell, Lennie Boyd, Dan Dameo, Eric, Greg Witmer to name a few that made it a great time. Lets not forget Hell Hawk, Frank "Lucky" Luckman!
As far as airplanes, the P-47's did it for me. The PBY flew at Millville in honor of my deceased friend and fellow PBY pilot, Nathan Gordon, MOH. Fare thee well old pelican!
About the Cat's bow turret, the Fighter Factory has a fully restored seperate turret, but the TC requires (for flight) the mechanism be removed and the gun opening faired over. So, it wouldnt make sense to install it when the airplane continues to fly. It would be nice to place it on display in the museum.
I've flown this Cat for 6 years now, in between Liberty Belle's schedule and other Fighter Factory airplanes, and we have yet to place it on H2O. Additional insurance $ was the deal breaker. At the time, Jerry asked me if we needed to put it on the water. Of course not. I found this additional premium interesting since I'm typed in 5 large boats and stayed water current in the CL-215, Albatross, and Mallard. I havent flown the CL-415 in several years, but I'm typed in it too. Thats discounting any ASES currency, and type of water experience as well. All that said, a CL-215 can run 180K a year to insure.
Hydrodynamically, the Cat is a 1935 design and operates in a relatively narrow envelope on the water when compared to these later designs. The Canadair's are best, (much borrowed from the hull design of the Princess) with the Albatross following with its deep water design. Naturally, this stands to reason following design timelines.
I dont know about the combat history, if any, of the former C-FOFI, now in Glendale. David Legg stated in his Cat survivors book that any details of this airframes wartime service are obscure. There is always some story that a Cat attacked a U-Boat, including one such episode for the Fighter Factory's 48294. I've seen that claim in print too. Most of these claims are unsubstantiated.
What is unique to 48294 is that all the combat logs are intact to include the first test flight at San Diego on Oct. 23rd 1943. It would serve with VP-92 flying out of Morroco, at both Port Lyautey and Casablanca after being outfitted with depth charge bomb racks under the wings. This, and all her subsequent patrols are logged and signed by both pilots. I have made color copies of every page of her wartime service logs and a thorough study reveals no entry of any U-boat attack made.
Just patrol after patrol. And, this is in the Straits of Gilbraltor area!
VP-92 would later transfer to Trinidad and she performed the same task in the Atlantic. This is the documented facts.
It's longest logged flight is from San Diego to Norfolk, 2 weeks after its shakedown flight, for a total of 19.2 hrs.
Anyway, for someone that rarely posts here, I've rambled on far too long.
Hopefully, we'll continue to clear the U-boats out of the local lakes and keep the Cat flying.
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Didnt know any -5A's were still flying! 
