LYCOS RETRIEVER 
F4F Wildcat - Grumman
built 234 days ago
The Grumman F4F Wildcat was the standard carrier-based fighter of the United States Navy for the first year and a half of World War II. An improved version built by General Motors (the General Motors FM Wildcat) remained in service throughout the war, on escort carriers where newer, larger and heavier fighters could not be used. The Wildcat was outperformed by the Mitsubishi Zero, its major opponent in the Pacific war, but held its own by absorbing far more damage and wielding more firepower. With heavy armor and self-sealing fuel tanks, the Grumman airframe could survive far more than its lightweight, unarmored Japanese rival.
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At the time of Pearl Harbour, only USS Enterprise had a fully-equipped Wildcat squadron, VF-6 with F4F-3As. The USS Enterprise was then transferring a detachment of VMF-211... equipped with F4F-3s, to Wake. The USS Saratoga was in San Diego, working up for operations of the F4F-3s of VF-3. Eleven F4F-3s of VMF-211 were at the Ewa Marine Air Corps Station on Oahu; nine of these were damaged or destroyed during the Japanese attack. The detachment of VMF-211 on Wake lost 7 Wildcats to Japanese attacks on 8 December, but the remaining five put up a fierce defense, making the first bomber kill on 9 December. The destroyer Kisagara was sunk by the Wildcats, and the Japanese invasion force retreated.
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The F4F Wildcat development actually stemmed from an initial biplane design. Grumman, the principle contractor, was in competition with the Brewster monoplane design for the United States Navy's need of a true carrier-borne fighter aircraft. The initial biplane design... was never produced. Instead, Grumman reworked the initial design plans into a monoplane form (the aforementioned Brewster would go on to be accepted as the F2F Brewster, but the US Navy was so impressed by the reworked Wildcat design, then designated as the G-18 monoplane form the G-16 biplane project, that prototyping of the Wildcat would continue as the XF4F-2. Knowing this, one can see now why the fuselage of the Wildcat is so grossly exaggerated, hence the need to accommodate two sets of wings in the initial biplane design.
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Grumman's first major warplane was the innovative F4F Wildcat, a single-seat, single-engine, carrier-based strike fighter equipped with a unique Grumman invention called "sto-wings, which allowed a plane's wings to fold in half for easy storage on cramped aircraft carriers. It had six machine guns and two 100-pound (45-kilogram) bombs and was ... Grumman's first mono-wing fighter. Unfortunately, the Japanese Zero airplane was faster and often outperformed it. Nevertheless, many U.S. pilots still held their own in dogfights because of the Wildcat's excellent diving and rolling ability. In fact, New York Times correspondent Foster Hailey believed the Wildcat "did more than any single instrument of war to save the day for the United States in the Pacific."
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Despite the three strikes, Grumman F4F Wildcats was not out, and orders were placed for the XF4F-3. Shortly after America became involved in the Pacific war, the tough little Grummans were flying from carriers and remote Pacific islands.
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The F4F Wildcat was the main shipboard fighter when the US entered WWII. The F4F was barrel-shaped, with angular wingtips and rudder and a narrow-track undercarriage. The Mitsubishi A6M outperformed it, but the F4F was well-armed and reliable, and was a natural shipboard aircraft, probably easier to land on a carrier deck than on land. It set the reputation of Grumman for building immensely strong aircraft. The F4F never had a operational speed limitation. An improved version built by General Motors (the General Motors FM Wildcat) remained in service throughout the war, on escort carriers where newer, larger and heavier fighters could not be used.
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F4F Wildcat - Grumman