04/30/2012. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "Produced by subcontractor General Motors - Eastern Aircraft Division, this aircraft was delivered to the USN on June 1, 1945, and served respectively with VT-75 Fish Hawks, VT-82 Devil's Diplomats, and ended USN service at the Naval Air Reserve Training at Los Alamitos, California.

The TBM-3E was transferred under lend/lease to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1950 and was modified by the Fairey Aviation Company of Canada, Ltd. at Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia. ASW modifications included improved radar, electronic countermeasures equipment, and sonar buoys, while the upper ball turret was replaced with a sloping glass canopy. The modified aircraft was redesignated Avenger AS.Mk.3, and was in succession coded ABK, AB-P and 315, while operated by 881 Squadron. It was struck off charge on January 1, 1958.

In 1963 it came on the US civil registry as N6583D, and was used as an insecticide sprayer by Simsbury Flying Service of Simsbury, Connecticut till 1970. That year it was acquired by the Confederate Air Force (CAF) at Harlingen, Texas, and given the pictured livery, representing an aircraft of VT-10 as operated from the carrier Yorktown (CV-10). Between 1981 and 1985, the aircraft was stored in the open at Mesa, Arizona, in February, 1985 it was flown to the new CAF Unit the "Rocky Mountain Squadron" in Grand Junction, Colorado.

After a four-year restoration, during which the upper ball turret was re-installed, the aircraft reappeared in the markings of a VT-84 TBM aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), the aircraft flew again in July 1989. On September 6, 1991, it was reregistered to the CAF American Airpower Heritage Museum in Midland, while the CAF was renamed Commemorative Air Force in 2002."

Read the type remarks on page 12451.