Grumman F6F Hellcat

Don't know if this is true but I believe I read the F6F was the only plane in history designed to combat another aircraft, The Zero. Has anyone ever read this?

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Controversy has swirled concerning whether the Grumman F6F Hellcat or the Chance Vought F4U Corsair was the best US Navy fighter of WW II. And, some of that is occurring above. You must know some engineering and considerable history to accurately describe the relationship. I happen to love both fighters.

You will notice, if you check, that radial engines produced much less horsepower only a few years before. Technology advances at the beginning of the war were beginning to promise some amazingly powerful engines. Very powerful engines could only be exploited with large diameter propellers. Grumman and Chance Vought approached this problem very differently. The Corsair came along earlier. To keep the larger prop away from the ground or deck, it was designed with an inverted-gull wing to allow shorter, stouter landing gear for the rigors of carrier landings. Center-of-gravity considerations moved the cockpit further aft. The unfortunate byproduct of this design was that the very long and large nose and the rearward positioning of the pilot caused the carrier deck to be hidden in the last seconds of landing. For a confident, experienced pilot, this was tolerable. But, for inexperienced pilots, the Corsair was a 'killer'.

The Hellcat, on the other hand, put the pilot forward and 'beefed up' the taller landing gear to withstand carrier landings. The Hellcat didn't challenge the inexperienced pilot's abilities. When the Hellcat became available and was deployed, the Corsairs were reassigned to land bases with some Navy but mostly Marine squadrons where landing on airstrips with wide, long runways was the rule and little problem.

Before you think that I'm defending the Hellcat, the Corsair actually had slightly better performance and maneuverability. The Japanese called the Corsair 'Whistling Death' because the oil-cooler intakes in the wing-roots made a distinctive whine during a dive.

Regards, Rich...

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Flew the F6 at VU 3 in 1958 configured as a drone. Greatest flying time I ever had as the squadron had about 30 of them and putting time on the engines was the only mission. All painted red and in those days there were few if any constraints to just getting in one and going "flying"..........those days will never return !!

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i operated the f6f drone out of point magu in 54-55 the aircraft is very forgiving in respect to pulling out of almost any attitude you could put it in during takeoff or landing including 90 degree and or inverted takeoff , we flew 4-6 drone ops a day with recovery approx. 60% lots of fun

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The most effective carrier-based fighter of world War II, period. The Pacific Campaign could never have been won without these aircraft.

Oh yes, I can hear all the Corsair fans disputing that statement already, with their arguments about how much better the F4U performed. The point is, however, that the assertion concerns the most effective CARRIER-BASED fighter, and that title simply has to go the the Hellcat. Boyington and his famous "Black Sheep" Marine aviators were all strictly land-based. The navy finally did deploy F4Us from carriers, but that was only in the last few months of the war, after the Hellcats had already accomplished most of the carrier-based fighting.

Vought first flew the F4U in the spring of 1940 and when, two years later, it still wasn't panning out as a viable carrier-based fighter, the Navy turned to the people at Beth Page, on the other side of Long Island Sound, to come up with an alternative. Grumman designed, built and deployed the F6F in combat in less than 18 months, and all while Vought was still trying to get the bugs out of the F4U. To develop such an outstanding fighter plane in such a short time was a phenomenal achievement by any standards!

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A good airplane

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I was just in Maui and dove on a hellcat in about 50ft of water off McGregor point. We heard the pilot survived. Aircraft was in good shape sitting upright on the bottom.

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kill ratio against the mistsubishi zero?
19 to 1

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Hi Funseekers!..I am finishing up my model aircraft, the F6F, complete with wing armament and radio antenna. This is tge 2nd one, first one was back in the 50's when I was still in H.S. .. This time, as a retired man, I built another wood scale model out of the Guillow box and even hand-crafted the tri-propeller from basswood to give it the authenthic look and painted it blue and yellow, the colors of its carrier usage. Will have photos on Facebook.
It was nice reading all the comments on this fine aircraft.

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This was a truly great airplane! According to William Green's book "Famous Fighters of the Second World War", (Doubleday, 1967), the Hellcat is credited with 4,947 of the 6,477 enemy aircraft claimed to have been destroyed in the air by U.S. Navy carrier pilots. If we add the scores of shore-based Hellcats, the total comes to 5,156 enemy machines, the ratio of kills to losses exceeding nineteen to one! Near the end of the war Grumman equipped a test model, the XF6F-6, with an R-2800-18W P /W 2,450 hp water-injected engine driving a four bladed Hamilton Standard propeller. This test aircraft reached a top speed of 417 mph at 22,000 ft.,the fastest of all Hellcats.

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Flew this plane off the carrier Wasp (CV -18).Never had a problem ,unless you count the approx. 3'x3' tip of the wing i left in the Philippines after an attack on a Jap cruiser. Returned about 180 miles and landed aboard ship w /no problem. Love that plane.

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It caught my attention when you said night fighter.
I'm curious about the pair of 20 mm cannons mixed with the 4 remaining .50s on early F6F night fighters in the war years.
What was their firing rate and belt composition (AP to HE etc..and respective shell weight and %HE), and any jamming issues? How effective etc...? Any light you can add?

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nice plane.igota model rc

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Bill, Grumman had several plants producing the F6 but the main one was at Bethpage, Long Island, near Farmingdale.

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My father was a plant manager for Grumman in N.y. during world war II. I remember going to the field to see Wildcats
& Hellcats. We lived in Stoney Brook, Long Island, NY I can't remember the name of the Plant /Field where he worked?
Anyone might know? Please e-mail me. Thanks, Bill

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Something this article fails to mention, or at least I didn't see was that in 1944 Grumman was turning out one Hellcat per hour - 644 in one month - an aircraft production record which has never been equaled. That's incredible.

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My dad, Jack Carver, callsign "Bird Dog" was with VF-6
aboard the Hancock....he loved the airplane until the day he died...alkways claimed it was the best. He recieved 5 Air Medals...shot down several of the other guys...and was my hero.

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Fron feb 53 to June 53, I was in MTC-10 (N) Fighter squadron. It had F6F's. We were the last to use F6's. The squadron taught pilots, for night combat. They had installed a Hughs radar on the right wing. I was a parachute rigger, and I filled the planes with oxygen, which inside, on the armour plate, for the pilots. Jim Scanlan

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Woh, I hope I don't get into trouble here. There is quite an elite crowd at this sight. Here goes: The F6F was the perfect aircraft for the USN when it arrived. An easy (by comparison) aircraft to learn to fly and protectively forgiving. Best engine of the war and dependable frame. Hard combination to beat. Can somebody please tell me where the maximum published speed of 380 mph. came from? It's not true. In a USN comparison test against an F4U-1 and FW-190A a F6F-3 with water injection reach a maximum speed of 409 mph. A USN Air Station Performance Test Each 1000th Airplane
(TED No. PTR-2125) report testing a F6F-5 No.58310 they reported a maximum speed of 391 mph. at 23,100 ft. at military power (NOT WAR EMERGENCY). By the way, if they hadn't come up with the Hellcat there would have been a lot of Corsairs at the bottom of the ocean.

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