The flyer was Merle Gustafson's "Angel of Okinawa" (BuNo.97286) wearing a temporary coat of movie paint. They actually retracted the gear and pulled it across the carrier deck on a custom dolly for the carrier crash scene. Looked very real in the film from what I remember!
The disassembled plane was BuNo.124447 which at the time was owned by either Bill Vartanian. At the time it was just one of the recent Hollywood Wings recoveries that had been purchased by Vartanian and placed in storage at the Aero Sport hangar in Chino. It was sold a couple of years later to Glen Hyde, after which it was restored and flown to Oshkosh in 1987 where it won an award for best Navy Fighter. I spent that entire week at EAA with Hyde, his buddies, and the Corsair, keeping the vigil and polishing the plane, etc. I was seventeen at the time and loving every minute of it.
Unfortunately, it was traded off the following year to the USMC Museum, disassembled, and delivered by truck to the Mid-Americal Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas for permanent display. Glen got a big load of T-28's and UH-1 Huey's in trade though, so he came out smelling like roses I suppose. I still hated to see that beautiful, and VERY authentic restoration relegated to government museum duty after only one year on the air show circuit. It was the first F4U-5N ever to be restored with the radar pod installed and the working scope in the cockpit.
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Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.comhttp://www.robmears.com
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