The Grumman F6F Hellcat was a fighter aircraft descended from the earlier F4F Wildcat, but was a completely new design sharing only a familial resemblance to the Wildcat. Some tagged it as "Wildcat's big brother". The Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair were the primary United States Navy carrier fighters in the second half of World War II.
The Hellcat proved to be the most successful aircraft in naval history, destroying 5,171 aircraft in service with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps (5,163 in the Pacific and eight more during the invasion of Southern France), plus 52 with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm during World War II. Postwar, the Hellcat aircraft was rapidly phased out of front line service, finally retiring in 1954 as a night-fighter in composite squadrons.
The Hellcat first saw action against the Japanese on 1 September 1943 when fighters off the USS Independence (CVL-22) shot down a snooping seaplane.[citation needed] Soon after, on 23 November, Hellcats engaged Japanese aircraft over Tarawa, shooting down a claimed 30 Mitsubishi Zeros for the loss of one F6F.[citation needed] Over Rabaul, New Britain, on 11 November 1943, Hellcats were engaged in day-long fights with many Japanese aircraft including A6M Zeros, claiming more than 100 victories while losing few F6Fs.[citation needed] Hellcats also utilized the "Thach Weave", which had been developed into a formation tactic to compensate for the older F4F Wildcat's deficiencies.
Hellcats were involved in practically all engagements with Japanese air power from that point onward. It was the major U.S. Navy fighter type involved in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, where so many Japanese aircraft were shot down that Navy aircrews nicknamed the battle The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. The F6F accounted for 75% of all aerial victories recorded by the U.S. Navy in the Pacific.[citation needed] Radar-equipped Hellcat night fighter squadrons appeared in early 1944.
Navy and Marine F6Fs flew 66,530 combat sorties (45% of all fighter sorties of the war, 62,386 sorties were flown from aircraft carriers[12]) and destroyed 5,163 enemy aircraft (56% of all Naval/Marine air victories of the war) at a cost of 270 Hellcats (an overall kill-to-loss ratio of 19:1). The aircraft performed well against the best Japanese opponents with a 13:1 kill ratio against Mitsubishi A6M, 9.5:1 against Nakajima Ki-84, 28:0 against Kawanishi N1K-J, and 3.7:1 against Mitsubishi J2M during the last year of the war. The F6F became the prime ace-maker aircraft in the American inventory, with 306 Hellcat aces. That being said, it must be noted that the U.S. successes were not only attributed to superior aircraft, but also because they faced increasingly inexperienced Japanese aviators from 1942 onwards.
In the ground attack role, Hellcats dropped 6,503 tons of bombs.
The British Fleet Air Arm received 1,263 F6Fs under the Lend-Lease Act and dubbed it Gannet I. The name Hellcat was eventually retained in early 1943 for the sake of simplicity, as the Royal Navy at that time adopted the use of the existing American naval names for all the U.S.-made aircraft supplied to it, with the F6F-3 being designated Hellcat F I, the F6F-5, the Hellcat F II and the F6F-5N, the Hellcat NF II. They saw action off Norway, in the Mediterranean and in the Far East. A number were fitted with photographic reconnaissance equipment similar to the F6F-5P, receiving the designation Hellcat FR II. FAA Hellcats, as with other Lend-Lease aircraft, were rapidly replaced by British aircraft after the end of the war, with only two of the twelve squadrons equipped with the Hellcat at VJ-Day still retaining Hellcats by the end of 1945. These two squadrons were disbanded in 1946. In British service, the Hellcats proved to be a match even for the main Luftwaffe fighters, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190.
Tags: Grumman Hellcat Airplane WW2 USMC USAAF Warbird Aviation Pacific
