Grumman Wildcat

Grumman Wildcat

The Grumman F4F Wildcat was an American carrier-based fighter that began service with both the United States Navy and the Fleet Air Arm in 1940. Although first used in combat by the British in Europe, the Wildcat would become the primary carrier fighter for the first year and a half of the United States Navy's involvement in World War II in the Pacific Theater. The FM Wildcat, an improved version built by General Motors, remained in service throughout the remainder of the war on escort carriers, where larger and heavier fighters could not be used.

The F4F-1 began as a unbuilt biplane design entered in a US Navy competition, being beaten by the monoplane Brewster F2A-1 design. This resulted in its complete remodeling into the monoplane XF4F-2. This was evaluated against the Buffalo, but although the XF4F-2 was marginally faster, the Buffalo was otherwise superior and was chosen for production.. Grumman's prototype was then rebuilt as the XF4F-3 with new wings and tail and a supercharged version of the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 "Twin Wasp" radial engine. Testing of the XF4F-3 led to an order for F4F-3 production models, the first of which was completed in February 1940. France also ordered the type, powered by Wright R-1820 "Cyclone 9" radial engines, but France fell before they could be delivered and they ultimately went to the British Royal Navy, which called them "Martlet I"s. Both the British planes and the US Navy's F4F-3 with an armament of four .50 caliber Browning machine guns, joined active units in 1940.

All versions of the Wildcat used fuselage mounted, hand-cranked landing gear with a relatively narrow track, making landing accidents, where the landing gear were not fully locked into place, distressingly common. This unusual main landing gear design was originally designed by Grover Loening, for his firm's aircraft in the 1920s, and as Leroy Grumman had worked for Loening before starting up his own company, it was readily licensed to Grumman and was used earlier on all of Grumman's fighter biplanes (from the FF-1 through the F3F) of the 1930s and on the J2F Duck amphibious biplane.

The name "Wildcat" was officially adopted on 1 October 1941.

In the European theater, the Wildcat scored its first combat victory on Christmas Day 1940, when a land-based British Fleet Air Arm Martlet (as the type then known in British service) destroyed a Junkers Ju 88 bomber over the Scapa Flow naval base. This was the first combat victory by a US-built fighter in British service in World War II. The type also pioneered combat operations from the smaller escort carriers.[5] Six went to sea aboard the converted ex-German merchant vessel HMS Audacity in mid-1941 and shot down several Luftwaffe Fw 200 Condor bombers during highly effective convoy escort operations. These were the first of many Wildcats to see shipboard combat. The Fleet Air Arm was later to abandon the practice of using its own unique names for US-provided aircraft in British naval service, and began to use the US Navy's aircraft names instead .

The Wildcat was outperformed by the Mitsubishi Zero, its major opponent in the early part of the Pacific Theater, but held its own by absorbing far more damage. With relatively heavy armor and self-sealing fuel tanks, the Grumman airframe could survive far more than its lightweight, unarmored Japanese rival. Many US Navy fighter pilots also were saved by the F4F's ZB homing device, which allowed them to find their carriers in poor visibility, provided they could get within the 30-mile range of the homing beacon.

Four US Marine Corps Wildcats played a prominent role in the defence of Wake Island in December 1941. USN and USMC aircraft were the fleet's primary air defence during the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway and, land-based Wildcats played a major role during the Guadalcanal Campaign of 1942-43.. It was not until 1943 that more advanced naval fighters, the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair, capable of taking on the Zero on more even terms reached the South Pacific theatre.

The Japanese ace Saburo Sakai describes the Wildcat's ability for absorbing damage: “ I had full confidence in my ability to destroy the Grumman and decided to finish off the enemy fighter with only my 7.7mm machine guns. I turned the 20mm. cannon switch to the 'off' position, and closed in. For some strange reason, even after I had poured about five or six hundred rounds of ammunition directly into the Grumman, the airplane did not fall, but kept on flying. I thought this very odd - it had never happened before - and closed the distance between the two airplanes until I could almost reach out and touch the Grumman. To my surprise, the Grumman's rudder and tail were torn to shreds, looking like an old torn piece of rag. With his plane in such condition, no wonder the pilot was unable to continue fighting! A Zero which had taken that many bullets would have been a ball of fire by now. ” 

During the course of the war, Navy and Marine F4Fs and FMs flew 15,553 combat sorties (14,027 of these from aircraft carriers), destroying 1,327 enemy aircraft at a cost of 191 Wildcats (an overall kill-to-loss ratio of 6.9:1). True to their escort fighter role, Wildcats dropped only 154 tons of bombs during the war.

from Wikipedia