Grumman F6F Hellcat
The Grumman F6F Hellcat was the United States Navy's principal carrier fighter of the Second World War. Designed by Grumman as a larger, far more powerful successor to the F4F Wildcat and put into production before testing was complete, it entered combat in 1943 and took air superiority in the Pacific from the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. American and British Hellcats were credited with 5,203 Japanese and 13 German aircraft destroyed for 270 of their own lost in air combat. Grumman built 12,275 by November 1945; after the war the type served on in training, reserve, night-fighter and drone roles, and survivors are preserved in museums, with a few still flying.
Why It Mattered
In 1942 the United States Navy's carrier fighter, the F4F Wildcat, could not match Japan's Mitsubishi A6M Zero, and the Navy badly needed a more powerful fighter to contest air superiority in the Pacific. The Hellcat was that fighter: in service from 1943, it became the platform from which American naval aviation cleared Japanese air power from the Pacific skies. The scale of the result was exceptional: American and British Hellcats were credited with 5,203 Japanese aircraft destroyed in the Pacific and another 13 German aircraft in Europe, against 270 Hellcats lost, a kill-loss ratio of 19 to 1. Its escort work mattered as much as its victories: from 1943 to 1945, Japanese aircraft are known to have brought down only 42 of the carrier-based bombers and torpedo planes the Hellcats were escorting.
Design Notes
The Hellcat began in June 1941, when the Navy asked Grumman for a better Wildcat; what Grumman proposed instead was an entirely new fighter, larger and heavier in every respect. Simplicity was a hallmark of the design: known components, ease of manufacture treated as a priority, and a chief engineer who built components to twice the strength the specifications required. The prototype first flew in June 1942 behind a Wright Cyclone, but speed and climb fell short of expectations, so Grumman re-engined the design with the 2,000-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, and that engine powered the production aircraft. Armament was six .50-caliber machine guns, and the airframe's rugged construction let it absorb damage that lightly built opponents could not. Remarkably little modification followed: the main development, the F6F-5 of mid-1944, added armor, a reinforced tail and a water-injected engine, and could carry rockets as well as bombs, while radar-equipped night-fighter and photo-reconnaissance versions were made from both main models.
Operational History
Grumman started production in October 1942, while the prototype was still in testing, and the Navy accepted the first production F6F-3 in January 1943. The type reached operational readiness with VF-9 on USS Essex in February 1943, and first saw combat on 31 August 1943, in the raids on Marcus Island. Against the Zero, the Hellcat proved superior in most performance categories, especially at high altitude; the only advantage the Zero kept was its turning ability at slower speeds. Hellcats provided most of the U.S. Navy's fighters at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, where Japanese aircraft were shot down in such numbers that Navy aircrews nicknamed the battle the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot". Across the war, three-quarters of the U.S. Navy's aerial victories in the Pacific were credited to the F6F, and 305 of its pilots became aces. As the island campaigns advanced, Hellcats flew fighter sweeps over enemy airfields ahead of invasions, kept combat air patrols over the fleet and the beaches, and turned increasingly to ground attack, firing over 60,000 rockets at targets ashore and at sea. Britain's Fleet Air Arm received 1,263 Hellcats under Lend-Lease and flew them in action off Norway, in the Mediterranean and in the Far East. When the war ended, Hellcats were among the carrier aircraft that flew over the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay as the Japanese surrender was signed on her deck.
Afterlife
Production ended in November 1945 with 12,275 aircraft built, and the Hellcat soon left front-line carrier service, although it continued in a limited U.S. Navy role until 1953, and radar-equipped F6F-5N night fighters remained in service as late as 1954. Most postwar Hellcats flew in the training command and the squadrons of the Naval Air Reserve. Others were converted to radio-controlled drones: the example now in the Smithsonian flew unmanned through the Bikini Atoll atomic tests in 1946, and Hellcat drones loaded with explosives were launched against targets during the Korean War. The type briefly became a showpiece: the first Blue Angels team, formed in 1946, flew the F6F-5 Hellcat. Hellcats also served after the war in the French and Uruguayan navies. Today the type is preserved in museums, and the National Air and Space Museum displays its F6F-3 at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia; a few examples fly, among them an F6F-5 that returned to the air in January 2021 after a two-and-a-half-year restoration at Chino, California.