Restored F4F Wildcat

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Don't know, but it looks to have only 4 guns so it probably is an FM-1. I think that more FM-1's were recovered from Lake Michigan, where they were pretty well preserved. We have one in a local museum, although they fitted it with 6 guns during restoration.

 
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Utmost care has to be exercised when changing the battery in a Wildcat....Thou shall NOT get turned turtle when trying to get out of the heckhole where the battery is. It's how I got formally introduced to Howard Pardue, Fast Eddie, Nelson Ezell and a couple other guys from Breckenridge. It took six of them to pull me like a fish out of that hole!
 
People have been known to ride - as in flight - in the space behind the seat in a Wildcat. There is a lot of room there, as it was in the F3F. There was a old movie, Flight Command, where a pilot crashed an F3F and another landed next to him, removed the radio transmitter, and put the injured pilot in that compartment.
 
Like flying on Piedmont!
 
The photos are a little deceiving on the belly space, if you have never been close to a Wildcat. The vacuum tank in the first photo is about 14" in diameter. The forward most radio shelf is about 25" wide.... Lots of fore and aft room. I don't remember offhand what the lower tank is for, but the one I was working on, had the battery in that area or slightly forward.
 
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