Well, Bodhi, I see now why you've asked for help on this, images of F4U-4s with documentation are hard to find
I'd hoped +Tiff could help, but when he said he didn't have much I spent a little time googling. Here's what I found.....
It seems John Glenn flew the F4U-4 in China the last few months of the war. I found a couple of different references to that, I would imagine that in the case of a person of his celebrity you could find much more with serious inquiries. Here's a page from the
FLIGHT JOURNAL website that mentions his service in this role. Also, here's an image from their
CORSAIR IMAGES that they say is his aircraft:
I found a similar scheme from a
MODELER'S WEBPAGE that references a specific aircraft number (# 81294) of VMF-211 and service in China. It has a similar color scheme as shown in this image:
I also found references to VMF-222 and VMF-223 having flown F4U-4s in the late part of the war. Here's an image from another
MODELING WEBSITE:
However, this may not be helpful, as I can't provide a path to research the provenence of the scheme, and I see two problems. One is the red stripe in the center of the white fields adjacent to the star - my understanding is that was a post-war development of the insignia. Also, there's a photograph of a similarly-colored bird out there
HERE that as you can see doesn't have the correct squadron emblem on the nose:
I haven't pinned it down, but I bet that photo is of a restored bird which would mean you probably wouldn't want to go that route.
I think the John Glenn thing would add a nice cachet to your project and recommend you investigate this further, which shouldn't be very hard.
I hope some of this helps. If you use any idea here, contribute the money for the AH subscription to the cause of your choice.
culero
