This plane was spotted in a video made by the pilot James T Sykes, he compiled film he shot while in the Marines in the Pacific. It's a great video to watch and see what the pilots did on the ground, in the air and conditions in which they lived in and flew from.. Also some good shots of other Corsairs, PBY, Avengers and B-24's on the ground and in the air. According to James in the video "plane captain Slim Heglund really kept my plane up. And to ensure that I brought rot-gut from Sydney. Because I preferred round trips in the Chief. They had a mixture that they put on the plane that really made it shine."
From the film it looks as VMF-223 had a mix of tri-color and Sea Blue FG-1A's. The Goodyear FG-1A differed from the Vought F4U-1A in that it didn't have the the arresting hook, wings were lock down with no mechanism to to fold, different tail wheel along with some other differences. Made for a lighter land based aircraft Corsair. This was BuNo. 14426, which puts it in the last 575 FG-1A's built.
He was stationed on Bougainville, Solomon's & Samar and the Philippines from October 1944 to April 1945. He split time with VMF-212 and VMF-223. Looking through books VMF-223 is called the "Bulldogs", he has VMF-212 as the "Bulldogs" and VMF-223 as "Fighting Bullpups" in his film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wHh16f8nVY&t=1694s
vmf-223 CM1 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
vmf-223 CM2 by
whitemanLS1, on Flickr
