I remember seeing that Hellcat, at least part of it, back in the early to mid 1970s at Earl Reinert's museum in Mundeline, IL. Musuem is a bit of a stretch actually, since it was more of a transitional warbird junkyard that contained bits and pieces of aircraft, mainly, with a few exceptions such as a nice B-26 and a B-25, a Bakka bomb and two or three Buchons about 80 percent complete. No rules, no supervision, just walk around the planes and bits of planes.
There was a lot of churn. Except for the limited selection of core aircraft there was always something new and something missing. I clearly remember one good visit (must have been nine or ten years old), where in addition to a razorback P-47 complete and flyable, a P-51 cockpit area you could sit in and a Saki 21 mounted in the open on a stand, there was a Hellcat fuselage sitting on its grear, sans engine and outer wings. In researching Reinhart history I came across a reference that it provided the core of the Chino aircraft.
Sad for the loss of the pilot and sad for the loss of history, in this case some personal history.
I have some photos of the museum from 1972 I will scan in soon and post. Quite the intersting place, shut down as an "eyesore" in the early 1990s as the farm fields around it had become yuppie housefarms (a real eyesore, IMO).
Charon
