Apologies for the blurry photo. Digital zoom. It was sent to me by a friend who knows I love planes, but with few other details. Beggars can't be choosers. :)
The photo makes the plane look blue, but my friend says they're pretty sure the plane was mainly polished aluminum.
The friend says that the engines sounded "different". To me, they appear in the photo to be radial engines, but of course I can't be 100% sure because the photo's so blurry.
To me, it looks like an early-era Cessna 310. The nose and tail look right, but as far as I know the 310 was never built with radial engines, and I've never heard of them being retrofitted. The tail seems wrong for the Cessna T-50/AT-17, which AFAIK only had an elliptical tail, and no tip tanks.
It does bear a striking resemblance to the Grumman F7F Tigercat. But that plane has a more rounded vertical stabilizer, and I didn't find any photos of examples that had tip tanks.
Also, my friend tells me that the wings are actually very long, having an aspect ratio approaching U-2 dimensions.
I feel like between the squared-off tail, the tip tanks, the slender aft fuselage, and apparently pointy nose, the aircraft type should be identifiable. Each of those features seems distinctly reminiscent to me of other aircraft, but none that have all of them.
If it helps, the photograph was taken recently in the Seattle area. It was headed ESE, around 2035 UTC today. It doesn't appear to be any of the aircraft in the nearby Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum collection. But I would not be surprised if it belongs to some well-known collection in the Pacific Northwest region.
