Hi Hoggardhigh,
First, before I give you the impression that I'm arguing with Ray Wagner, I want to note that Ray's an amazing researcher and a better (and more prolific) writer than I am. The difference (in this case) is that I spent six months digging through archival records that were unavailable when Ray last researched the Wildcat. If he was part of this conversation, I'm pretty sure he'd agree with the following.
There's a world of difference between building a plane, completing the plane, and accepting the plane. Perfectly good aircraft can sit for months awaiting acceptance and delivery, while newer production airframes move on ahead of them. (In one case, over a hundred F4Us were stuck at the Vought factory when heavy snows closed the runways. As the snows cleared, inspectors worked their way through the aircraft in front – the newer production – before accepting the older aircraft at the rear of the ramp.)
The Navy ordered 121 F4F-7s on contract 75736. Only 21 were built as ordered – unarmed camera planes with 685 gallon-capacity fuel tanks. The rest were to be diverted to the F4F-3S project. They were completed as landplanes and delivered to the Pacific Fleet Pool at San Diego to be converted to float plane configuration, but they were NOT accepted at that time. (The Navy would have had to pay Grumman once the planes were accepted, and since the aircraft were not yet equipped with floats, they were not yet added to the inventory.) A 6 November 1942 memo notes that the aircraft should be accepted as straight-up F4F-3s. Contract 75736 was closed, and the 100 -3s were moved to the end of contract 99340, assigned new serial numbers, accepted and delivered – since it took more than two months to complete all paperwork, install final government furnished equipment, and perform inspections and flight tests, these aircraft weren't accepted until 1943. They were the last F4F-3s delivered, but they were all built before F4F-4 production began, and they all should have had Bronze Green cockpits.
I've only seen 2 or 3 confirmed photos of the last batch of F4F-3s. The two that are properly identified were shot at Melbourne, Florida. ME-F-15 (BuNo 12328) was photographed on 3 June 1943, and ME-F-38 (12237) was photographed on 10 September 1943. The third photo depicted ME-F-4, but was miscaptioned as BuNo 12237 - just the wrong information stuck to the back of the print, but this could have been an earlier-production F4F-3. If you're serious about building one of these aircraft, send me a PM and I'll DropBox you the scans.
Cheers,
Dana
