USMC F4U markings (BuNo vs. tail number)

blandoon wrote:

Hi all, I'm looking into building a Korean War-era F4U-4B in VMF-323 markings, and I want to build a specific aircraft but can't figure out exactly how its markings should look. It appears that, at that time, the aircraft were being marked with a "tail number" (I'll call it that, even though it's not actually on the tail) that isn't part of the BuNo or anything else. For example, one of the Hasegawa kits includes decals for BuNo 96845, which is marked with the number 18. Is there any way to find out what that number would have been for a specific BuNo example? The background to this is that I found out, in doing some genealogy research, that a cousin of mine was the first Marine aviator killed in Korea (see here), so I decided it might be fun to model his airplane. I found a reference that seems to tell me what BuNo he flew that day, but I need to know what big white number to put on it. Any help with this would be very much appreciated...

One thing to try is contact all your living relatives and see if someone has his log book. That will be the only way to match them up unless you can find really good photos from that unit.

Thanks to both of you... I've done a little Google searching, which is how I came up with the government report showing the BuNos of the two Corsairs that Capt. Moses was shot down in. Ironically, he was shot down once, rescued by helicopter, then went out on a second mission and was shot down again.

There are a few useful pictures of VMF-323 Corsairs in August-September 1950, so I know for example that they were still using the rattlesnake on the nose at that time, but none of the photos show me the specific airplanes I am interested in (not too surprising really). As far as getting a look at his logbook, that might be a remote possibility - I'm not currently in contact with any of his immediate family, if any are still living, but I could look into it when I visit South Carolina next.

I bought the Academy 1/48 kit at my local hobby store, because I thought it had VMF-323 decals based on the box art and some references online, but the one I got only has Navy decals (doh). So, since I'll have to track down a decal sheet or another kit anyway, I expect I will do one of two things: either use the appropriate decals as-is, since they represent a real airplane that Capt. Moses might well have flown, or "decal-bash" them with the correct BuNo and a made-up tail number, and just accept that there's probably no way to know for sure (for now).

Oh well - I have some building to do before I get to the decal stage anyway...