4053

The "Akutan Zero," recovered virtually intact after a fatal landing accident in the Aleutians as a result of battle damage on 4 June 1942, was recovered by the Navy and taken to NAS North Island for evaluation. Its flight testing results were directly responsible for the design of Grumman's F6F "Hellcat." This photo was probably taken on 11 July 1942, the day after the crash was discovered by a Navy PBY crew.

The "Akutan Zero," recovered virtually intact after a fatal landing accident in the Aleutians, was recovered by the Navy and taken to NAS North Island for evaluation. Its flight testing results were directly responsible for the design of Grumman's F6F "Hellcat."

The "Akutan Zero," recovered virtually intact after a fatal landing accident in the Aleutians, was recovered by the Navy and taken to NAS North Island for evaluation. Its flight testing results were directly responsible for the design of Grumman's F6F "Hellcat." Here, the aircraft has been assigned a Navy Bureau Number: 45113. Photo taken 5 November 1942.

After a lot of squinting, I couldn't quite make out the Bureau Number with full confidence. Also, I was unable to ascertain the BuNo through any "Googling." However, the answer is here in the SDASM collection. Navy Test Pilot LCDR Eddie R. Sanders' Log book. As it turns out, BuNo 4053 was assigned to the Akutan Zero. See entries below:

That means the aircraft painter was either confused or dyslexic since that would make the applied BuNo 4503, with the stencilized "0" giving the appearance of two "1" digits...

Gerry Asher Or, I probably should have considered Sanders may have crossed up the digits, with 4503 being the actual number. Hopefully, there's a clearer photo of the tail and BuNo number out there somewhere.

4053 is the more likely number, as it was originally slated for a batch of SB2C-2s which were cancelled. 04503 was assigned to a PBY-5.