Origin
of the Sundowners Nickname and Patch
Howdy --My dad, Bill Leonard, tells me that the insignia
depicting 2 F4F's shooting down a sun was designed by Charlie Stimpson,
himself, with the input from several others, while at Maui. Sundowners,
is a play on words ... in the sailing navy a "Sundowner" was a ship whose
crew worked from dawn to sundown as opposed to knocking off in mid afternoon.
Later a diligent, hard working, put in the extra hours type, sailor also
became known as a "Sundowner". And, of course, the obvious reference
to Japan's land of the rising sun. The squadron air crews developed
a nifty stencil system to get the insignia on all the planes. Dad
has a square piece of leather with the insignia
painted on it ... from a test of the stenciling
system. This was accomplished before the deployment to Guadalcanal.
The squadron insignia were painted on both sides of each ship on an access
hatch just below and in front of the cockpit. Originally designed
to provide access to cowl mounted machine guns (only appeared in XF4F-2)
these hatches were used to get to the back on the instrument panel.
When the squadron left Guadalcanal, Dad knew
they'd be turning in their F4F's, being, at that time, the last F4F squadron
in combat. So, he went down to the bone yard and removed the corresponding
access hatches from a wrecked F4F. He took the hatches with the squadron
insignia on them off his plane and replaced them with the hatches from
the wreck. The hatches are still in the family. They're in fair shape
after traveling around the country for the rest of Dad's service (he retired
in 1970) ...even have 'F-21' on the inside of the panels, if you know where
to look. Both Dad and Charlie Stimson became aces while in VF-11
... Dad picked up victories 5 and 6 (2 previous from Tulagi raid of 4 May
'42, 1 at Coral Sea, and 1 at Midway). Charlie picked up 6 in VF-11's
first deployment and then another 10 in it's second. Some more history
on the "Sundowner Legend"
Signed Rich Leonare
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