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Grumman Widgeon During the days in which I thought I was building a career, I felt the measurement of my finally "making it" would be the purchase of a Grumman Widgeon. That, I thought, would be the fulfillment of a lot of dreams.... "I'm not certain what makes the Widgeon such a siren, but many pilots feel the same. The smallest of Grumman's line of ironworks amphibians, the G-44 first took to the water and then to the air in July 1940. Exactly what its market acceptance would have been had the war not come along is unknown. The armed forces, however, certainly saw the machine as a do-all, be-all utility/officer's transport and over 225 were manufactured for the military. The Coast Guard was the first to jump for the airplane with the J4F4. Even the Army Air Corps bought them as the OA-14. In 1944, the Navy took a full 136 examples into inventory as J4F-2s. After the war, about 50 of the airplanes were built as G-44As for the commercial market and the French hammered out another 40 examples, most of which wound up back in the US bringing the total to approximately 310 airplanes. Dave estimates about 35 are still flying in the States. We must remember one fact about those original Widgeons: Grumman didn't have the big flat Lycoming or Continentals available in 1940 that we take for granted today. The size of the airplane wasn't such that it would easily accept the 450 Pratt & Witneys of its bigger brother, the Goose, so they didn't have a lot of choices. Because of the limited availability of engines in the right horsepower class, all of the Widgeons to roll out of the factory doors were equipped with a matched pair of Ranger 6-440C-5 inlines, which put 200 questionable horses on each side. To make matters even more marginal, the Rangers were supposed to propel the airplane through a pair of fixed pitch wooden props, which were almost immediately replaced by fixed metal jobs. Pilots familiar with the Ranger and the heft of the Widgeon generally walk away shaking their heads in amazement. The inevitable comment has something to do with what a toad the airplane must have been with those anemic inline engines." |