LSFM's Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat

The Lone Star Flight Museum (LSFM) is the owner and operator of this rare Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat, which is available for airshows, flybys and film.

Months before the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, the Grumman company began formal development of a bigger and better successor to the company's excellent F4F Wildcat fighter. The result, the "F6F Hellcat", proved to be everything expected of it, being powerful, rugged, easy to build and fly, and proving a major player in the defeat of Japan.

Feedback from the British, then flying the Wildcat against the Nazis, and from the US Navy suggested that a more powerful engine was required. The design team, led by Dick Hutton and under the overall direction of vice-president of engineering Bill Schwendler, settled on the Pratt & Whitney (P&W) R-2800 Double Wasp, an air-cooled, two-row, 18-cylinder radial engine in the 1,500 kW (2,000 HP) class. The R-2800 was also planned to power both the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and the Vought F4U Corsair fighters, but both of these machines had been delayed, and so Grumman was able to get their hands on R-2800 production.

Production began at a new Grumman plant in Bethpage, New York, with the fighter going down the assembly line before the buildings were completed. The first production F6F-3 performed its initial flight on 3 October 1942, and service deliveries of the type began in early 1943. Following carrier trials, in March 1943 the type reached operational status with Navy fighter squadron VF-9 on the carrier USS ESSEX, with the aircraft painted Navy blue topside and white on the bottom, the standard color scheme for the fighter through the war. Within nine months of the first flight of the production machine, 15 squadrons were equipped with the type. The Hellcat was primarily a Navy machine, the Marines generally preferring the more formidable, but demanding, F4U Corsair.

The Hellcat clearly showed influence from the Wildcat. Like the Wildcat, the Hellcat was not elegant, but it was clean, straightforward, and built very rugged, confirming Grumman's
reputation with pilots as the "Iron Works". The Grumman motto was: "Make it strong, make it
work, make it simple." Engineers were encouraged to overdesign the machines, ensuring they exceeded Navy requirements by what was called a "Schwendler factor". The cockpit was designed to be the last thing to fail to help make sure pilots got back home safe.

The Hellcat went into combat in the early fall of 1943, with its first major action in a raid against Rabaul harbor on New Britain on 5 November 1943. From that time on, it was a major player in the Pacific naval campaigns. On 23 November 1943, US Navy F3F-3s tangled with Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters over Tarawa, with LT-JG Ralph Hanks shooting down five in five minutes and becoming an "instant ace". The next day the Yanks and Japanese mixed it up again. The final score of the two days of fighting was one Hellcat lost and 30 claimed kills on Zeroes.

The Hellcat no doubt came as a nasty surprise to Japanese pilots, since it looked enough like a Wildcat to be confused for one at a distance, but was a substantially more dangerous adversary, every bit as tough as the Wildcat but faster and more heavily armed. It was still no match for the Zero in terms of agility and couldn't out climb the "Zeke", but the Hellcat could almost always escape by going into a dive. Any competent Hellcat pilot who understood his machine's advantages and the Zeke's weaknesses had the upper hand.

The F6F-5 went into service just as the Hellcat accomplished its greatest feat of arms: the Marianas Turkey Shoot. On 19 June 1944, US Navy fighters protecting the US invasion of the Marianas island chain were challenged by swarms of Imperial Japanese Navy Zeroes. The Americans claimed 350 kills to a loss of 30 of their own aircraft. It was all but the end of Imperial Japanese Navy air power, now suppressed by what the US Navy called the "Big Blue Blanket" of naval air power. The last of 7,870 F6F-5s was rolled out in November 1945. As with the F6F-3, production included a night-fighter variant, the "F6F-5N" with AN/APS-6 radar, making up 1,435 of the total. Some F6F-5s were also converted to a photo-reconnaissance variant, the "F6F-5P". The US Navy and Marine Corps claimed 5,154 kills in the Hellcat during World War II, giving it a kill ratio of 19:1.

The LSFM's F6F-5 Hellcat is painted in the makings of Lt. A Vraciu, credited with 19 aerial victories and became known as "Grumman's best customer" since he was on two carriers that had been torpedoed, bailed out of two planes (one of which was a Hellcat), and ditched two Hellcats (one due to engine failure, the other to combat damage). After WWII, Vraciu stayed in the Navy and enjoyed a successful career before retiring on 1 January 1964 with the rank of commander.

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