Survivors
Beginning in 1949, F7Fs were flown to the US Navy storage facility at Naval Air Station Litchfield Park, Arizona. Although the vast majority of the airframes were eventually scrapped, a number of examples were purchased as surplus. The surviving Tigercats were primarily used as water bombers to fight forest fires in the 1960s and 1970s and Sis-Q Flying Services of Santa Rosa, California operated an F7F-3N tanker in this role until retirement in the late 1980s.
- Airworthy
- F7F-3 Tigercat, BuNo. 80390 is flightworthy and owned by Lewis Racing LCC in San Antonio, Texas.
- F7F-3 Tigercat, BuNo. 80411 is flightworthy and owned by the Palm Springs Air Museum in Palm Springs, California.
- F7F-3P Tigercat, BuNo. 80425 is flightworthy and owned by Avstar Inc. in Seattle, Washington.
- F7F-3P Tigercat, BuNo. 80483 is flightworthy and owned by Historic Flight Foundation in Mukilteo, Washington.
- F7F-3N Tigercat, BuNo. 80503 is flightworthy and owned by Lewis Racing LCC in San Antonio, Texas.
- F7F-3N Tigercat, BuNo. 80532 is flightworthy and owned by Merle Maine Enterprises in Ontario, Oregon.
- On display
- F7F-3 Tigercat, BuNo. 80373 is on display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in NAS Pensacola, Florida.
- F7F-3N Tigercat, BuNo. 80382 is on display at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California.
- F7F-3 Tigercat, BuNo. 80410 is on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.
- Under restoration
- F7F-3 Tigercat, BuNo. 80374 is under restoration to flightworthness by Pissed Away N7629C LCC in Bellevue, Washington.
- F7F-3N Tigercat, BuNo. 80375 is under restoration by WestPac Restorations in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
- F7F-3 Tigercat, BuNo. 80404 is under restoration to flightworthiness by Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida.
Read more about this topic: Grumman F7F Tigercat
Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)