8m 17sLength

Our newest resident warbird, TBM-3E Avenger "Ida Red" makes its first Vintage Aircraft Weekend appearance during the Ninth Annual event on Saturday, September 3rd, joined by Historic Flight Foundation's F7F Tigercat and Heritage Flight Museum's AD-4NA/A-1 Skyraider "The Proud American." TBM-3E Ida Red: Ida Red is a WW II Grumman Avenger Torpedo Bomber. She was built in March of 1945. As far as we know she was never used on a carrier but was based in a number of different squadrons on both the East and West coasts. The Avenger was the largest single engine aircraft built in the U.S. until the end of the war. She could carry 2000 pounds of bombs or one 2000 pound torpedo, two 100 gallon drop tanks, and eight 5 inch high velocity rockets. She had two forward firing 50 cal. machine guns and one 50 cal. machine gun in a turret aft of the canopy. Ida Red is powered by a Wright Cyclone R-2600 rated at 1900 H.P. at take off .This is a 14 cylinder, 2 row, radial engine turning a 3 bladed Hamilton Standard prop. Ida Red is painted in the markings of the aircraft that flew antisubmarine patrols against the German U-Boats in the Atlantic Theater. These aircraft took off from, and landed on the smallest carriers in the fleet. To make things even more difficult they had to do this at night so they could hunt the U-Boats while they were running on the surface trying to recharge their batteries. The Battle of the Atlantic raged throughout the war and it wasn't until the Navy was able to hunt the submarines with these great aircraft that the tide started to turn against the U-Boats. F7F Tigercat "Bad Kitty" What do we all love? A come-back story. One of the fabled Grumman “cats,” the F7F-3’s flight path is about redemption–how “the best damn fighter in the world” was literally rescued from the graveyard. Though the Tigercat was originally designed as a combat carrier plane, it never saw service in World War II. That said, this twin-engine fighter combined the power and stealth needed for ground missions in the Korean War, and also found a niche in photo reconnaissance. But it was sorely underused, and every Tigercat would have been turned into scrap metal if it weren’t for another innovation—a second career fighting forest fires. Our F7F-3, one of only 6 Tigercats still flying today, can tell the story. Skyraider: BuNo 126965 is an AD-4NA built in the early-50’s. While with the US Navy it served aboard the USS Kearsarge with VA-115 in 1953, off the coast of Korea. The cease-fire was called before it saw combat action, however the aircraft of VA-115 conducted DMZ patrols for the duration of the cruise. When it returned stateside it was stationed with FASRON 8 at Alameda before transitioning to FAETULANT in Norfolk, VA from November 1954 until August 1955. She ultimately entered storage at Litchfield Park in August 1957. She was stricken from the Navy list in July 1958, and left storage for France in March 1960. While with the French l’Armee de l’Air, our Skyraider was based at Chateaudun but served in Algeria in 1962, Djibouti in 1968, Madagascar in 1971, and Chad in 1976. It was sent to storage with Sogerma in September 1979 where it remained until 1983. The Musee de l’Air at Le Buurget acquired the aircraft in 1984, and sold it to a private owner in Belgium in 1985. This aircraft was purchased by Heritage Flight Museum in February of 2004 and very arduously flown, towed, cargoed, towed again, and flown again back to Bellingham from Belgium! Because of HFM’s USAF background, and because the Skyraider was used with great success by the Navy and the Air Force, we chose to ‘dress’ our Skyraider in typical USAF colors thus the reason we refer to it by it’s USAF designation of A-1.