Monday, Sep. 20, 1943
Hellcat
The U.S. Navy's most famed fighter plane--the hunchbacked, stubby Grumman F4F Wildcat--is a back number in aerial warfare. The Navy gladly made this admission last week. It could afford to. Besides its fancy, high-powered (2,000 h.p.) new Vought Corsair, it also has another brand-new fighter in service around the world.
The newest fighter is a direct descendant of the Wildcat and a factory mate of the Navy's crack Avenger torpedo plane. Its name: the Grumman Hellcat. This and little more the Navy announced, along with the news that a task force had crept close to the Jap's Marcus Island, thoroughly plastered it with shot and bombs from Hellcats and Avengers.
The Hellcat is strictly a war baby and the first fighter in combat service which was designed and built after Pearl Harbor. Shy, introversive "Roy" Grumman already had his engineering staff working on a bigger and better craft than the Wildcat when the war began, but they rubbed a lot of it out and started over again after they had talked to pilots who had met the Jap in combat.
Report from Butch. First of these returns from the front was brought in by the Navy's "Butch" O'Hare. What the Navy needed, he told Grumman men, was a fighter aircraft that could outclimb and outmaneuver a Zero, carry more .50-caliber guns than the Wildcat (four), lug a decent load of armor, and range farther than any Navy fighter had ever ranged before.
This was all Grumman's balding chief engineer Bill Schwendler wanted to hear. He went back to work, revamped his de signs, reviewed them with many another Navy fighter pilot as the job grew. By August, less than four months after O'Hare had laid down the fighter's law, the prototype was flying.
While test pilots were still wringing out the last of the bugs, Grumman Production Boss Leon A. Swirbul started to get the factory tooled. Three months after the first test flight, "Jake" Swirbul had rolled the first production model.
The Hellcat (F6F) is a big fighter with a strong family resemblance to the Wildcat. It has the same square wingtips, a bumblebee body.
Report on Manners. One of the most mannerly planes yet, the Hellcat flies straight and true, which makes it a good gunnery platform, just about lands itself, which makes it ideal for carrier operation. But it also has the "hot" qualities a fighter needs: dazzling rate of climb, plenty of speed and lots of high-altitude performance.
But the big ship's most amazing characteristic is that it is also a nimble dogfighter. Said one of its Navy pilots: "The first Jap fighter that ties into this one is going to get the surprise of his life." The surprise is still to come. At Marcus, the Hellcat met no Zeros.
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