I'm doing a labor of love by building a model of every plane my father flew during his service years.
One of the planes is an F5F and he flew it on two consecutive days in November of 1945. One day over Hiroshima and the other over Nagasaki.
Normally the F5F would be a P-38 twin engine plane modified for photo reconnaissance, however, my father list these two flights in the single engine column of his flight log.

Does anyone have an idea of what plane this could be?
Any help is very welcomed and appreciated

Thanks,
Tom Moon

Houston, Texas

I applaud your endeavor!!! Unfortunately I don't anything more to add to your quest, but did have a thought that your Dad actually meant a F4F. The Wildcat is a single engine a/c.....

Edit: Wow, the places your Dad flew just hit me. That must have been two interesting flights!!! Seeing that the Wildcat was retired in 1945 could support the fact that he flew to these areas of interest in that a/c.

Hello Tom,

If your dad was a Naval Aviator here is some food for thought. The Grumman F5F was a twin engine fighter that was never placed in production.



Its development led to the Grumman F7F Tigercat of which one squadron was on Okinawa by the wars end but they never flew combat missions. Might have flown recon after hostilties ended though.

The Photo-Recon version of the Wildcat was the F4F-7 but it was not widely used and by 1945 the most likely single engine photo-Recon naval aircraft would have been F6F-5P Hellcat. I'm guessing this is the aircraft your dad piloted.

Sincerely,
Brian

He must have accidentally checked the wrong box when writing up the flight log. The F-5 is PR version of the P-38.