Another look at the Hellcat

[l'Omnivore Sobriquet]

Ok then...
What about the Hellcat versus the '5' series of Italian fighters ?
Hum ?

I think picking this and that version of the F6F, against this and that '5' series Italian type, respecting chronology, should give a pretty hot challenge. All the way.
The Hellcat was such a great beast...

 

[Shortround6]

I have to laugh when I read Shortround's post 33. There are ZERO fighters in the world that aren't part of a service "team." That was true even in WWI. The Red Barron didn't do his own aircraft maintenance. He didn't fuel it. He didn't clean it.

Not sure what is being said there since there aren't any completly independent military aircraft.

And comparing them to sports teams is spot on. Sometimes a team is well prepared and easily overcomes the opposition, Other times they manage to lose the game. all this with the same players and caoches. Sometimes they have a lopsided win and loss to the same team in teh same season.

Fighters pilots have good days and bad days, too.

Try reading it again. Some people have suggested that the US could have won the Pacific airwar using F4Fs/FM-2s all the way to the end. It might have been possible but it would have been a lot bloodier for the Allies. Doesn't matter if the Red baron changed his own Spark plugs or had two enlisted men polishing his boots and goggles. It does matter if one team has better intel (think reading the opposing teams signals?) has more fuel and ammo (better fed and rested, eating sandwiches and sleeping on the bus or eating room service in a hotel).
Both sides had some really bad conditions at times in the Pacific. "OK, Captain Bob, you have to fly 300 miles to the Japanese held Island and bomb,strafe the runway. By the way, your normal crew chief is in the hospital with amoebic dysentery, his replacement only has a mild case of malaria, as to two of the mechanics and your armourer hasn't slept in 36 hours because he is filling in for other men sicker than he is. Good luck on the flight "

A brief wave of the dismissive hand and saying all fighters had ground crew/team members and so don't affect the success rate of the fighters in question doesn't quite put things in perspective.

 

[GregP]

Hi Shortround,

I WILL try reading it again. But the team doesn't get credit for a victory, the pilot does.

Wonder how many people it takes to maintain an F-22 or F-35? Bet it is more than for a Hellcat but, maybe not. They have a lot of automated test gear for these computerized flying video games than they did for WWII fighters. I think we had "futuristic" fighters in WWII before the rest of the technology caught up with the airframes.

 

[davparlr]

I have to laugh when I read Shortround's post 33. There are ZERO fighters in the world that aren't part of a service "team." That was true even in WWI. The Red Barron didn't do his own aircraft maintenance. He didn't fuel it. He didn't clean it.

I kinda got from SR was that the Navy "team" of 1944-45, when the F6F was flying, was much more experienced, trained, supported, and was a smoother operating machine than the Navy "team" of late '42 and '43, when the F4U was flying. Lots of lessons were learned post Pearl Harbor and 1944.

oops. looks like I'm a bit late in response.

 

[pbehn]

Perception and reality are rarely the same thing. There are many Brits especially the younger generation that think the Spitfire was our only fighter and the Lancaster was our only bomber.
As a British child I must say the Corsair figured more in post war movies probably because more were available as they were kept in service longer. As far as performance is concerned people frequently look at the best performance of a variant as typical. The double wasp Corsair was a beast and won post war races, it was a Corsair but only 10 were made. Militarily insignificant but a great addition to a legend.

 

[GregP]

If that's what he meant, he's right.

Combat experience has a way of improving your performance or you just keep repeating mistakes and, sooner or later, one of your mistakes will kill you. A combat veteran, almost by definition, learns his (or her) lessons well and adapts to the situation.

 

[wuzak]

Perception and reality are rarely the same thing. There are many Brits especially the younger generation that think the Spitfire was our only fighter and the Lancaster was our only bomber.
As a British child I must say the Corsair figured more in post war movies probably because more were available as they were kept in service longer. As far as performance is concerned people frequently look at the best performance of a variant as typical. The double wasp Corsair was a beast and won post war races, it was a Corsair but only 10 were made. Militarily insignificant but a great addition to a legend.

You mean Wasp Major (R-4360) rather than Double Wasp (R-2800), which powered all F4Us?

 

[Greyman]

In the book Brown had this to say about the Corsair:

'The Corsair was a mixture of the good, the mediocre, and the bad. It had excellent acceleration, speed, and firepower, and was rugged in construction, but its slow speed characteristics left much to be desired. Maneuverability was mediocre from the point of view of dogfighting, but it had a good rate of roll that could be used to advantage defensively. In summary, as a fighter, the Corsair was a formidable aircraft to introduce into the pacific theatre, but as a shipboard aircraft it had serious shortcomings.'

As an aside thanks to GregP for bringing this book to my attention so I could hunt it down. It's great to read Brown's opinions on so many aircraft.

 

[GregP]

He has several books out there. I found most on Amazon pretty cheap and they are all pretty good as far as I'm concerned.

In case you missed it, his comments are pretty much meant as a sort of 1-on-1 fight with pilots of equal skill, both familiar with their aircraft. They are not a reflection of combat where there is a disparity in numbers, experience, or both.

I'm sure you recognizzed that, but I've seen it said in print by Eric.

There are some pretty good books out there by some of the great aces, too but, unfortunately for me, I haven't located many in English by Axis aces. I'm sure they are quite revealing since this particular group had the highest-scoring pilots in history, even if you are a historical revisionist.

I'd really like to see a book by Ivan Kozhedub ... and it would be great if it were in digital form so I could get a translation that could at least make some sense.

 

[Conslaw]

How good was the Hellcat? The plane the Hellcat was supposed to supplement (the F4U) ended up supplementing the Hellcat. Grumman designed two planes to replace the Hellcat, the F7F and the F8F, with the F8F geared for fleet air defense and dogfighting and the F7F designed for fighter-bomber, night-fighting and long-range missions. The F6F remained more than good enough at all those missions to make production of the F7F and F8F a low priority.

 

[GregP]

The Hellcat was never supposed to supplement the F4U. It was a new design to upgrade the Wildcat with data available at the time. When the war was over, jets were the new babies of the Air Forces and Navies and the Corsair was a slightly better bomb hauler than the Hellcat. They also had a good supply of spares for it and the number required when not in a world wide war were well fitted to the number of avialable Corsairs.

In a peacetime world, there was no requirement for hordes of varied fighter types and when the limited carrier billets were full of jets, Corsairs, and Skyraiders, plus having a sfew station hacks around, the Hellcat was reduced to just what was needed. A few stayed in service, but were not deployed on carriers as bomb haulers.

After the draw down following the end of the war, the piston fighters were consigned to close air support or second-line duties in Korea. They obviously had no business hunting MiG-15s, but were expected to defiend themselves if attacked by jets. Most did, quite well.

The Hellcat was retired, true. But supplanted by the Corsair, no ... they just stayed in service a bit longer. Corsairs were doing the duty they were already doing to an extent in WWII, supporting the troops. They did that in the Pacific and did it well enough to attract attention over it.

 

[pbehn]

As far as I know the piston engined aircraft was redundant in 1945 with the exception of those that had to operate from aircraft carriers. The hottest piston engined aircraft are generally maritime because of this Corsair Bearcat and Sea Fury spring to mind. There never was a "Fury" put into production.

Talking of Mr Brown, part of the reason for his huge number of carrier landings was sorting the problems of landing heavy and jet powered AC on carriers.

 

[gjs238]

They also had a good supply of spares for it [the Corsair] and the number required when not in a world wide war were well fitted to the number of avialable Corsairs.

But Corsairs remained in production until 1953.
Why did they continue manufacturing them post-1945?
Hellcat production ceased in '45.

In the end, more Corsairs were manufactured than Hellcats (according to Wikipedia anyway).

 

[kool kitty89]

As far as I know the piston engined aircraft was redundant in 1945 with the exception of those that had to operate from aircraft carriers. The hottest piston engined aircraft are generally maritime because of this Corsair Bearcat and Sea Fury spring to mind. There never was a "Fury" put into production.

Talking of Mr Brown, part of the reason for his huge number of carrier landings was sorting the problems of landing heavy and jet powered AC on carriers.

Long range escort was still a problem due to fuel capacity and fuel efficiency, not to mention high optimal cruise speeds making close escort impractical for any extended period.

The P-80 might have managed it with 300 gal P-38 tip-tanks (as the trans-continental American distance speed record P-80 later employed) but I think those overstressed the wings for proper combat use even if drag wasn't unreasonably increased. (I do know that, when empty, most P-80 tip-tanks didn't add significant drag or roll-rate hindrance at most speeds and actually tended to improve both roll and speed under some conditions -a primitive winglet effect)

 

[GregP]

The Corsair remained in production somewhat due to foreign orders, but when the Hellcat was more or less retired ... not really since a lot went to reserve and training units ... they had enough Corsairs around for "spares" to keep them flying for about as long as they wanted to except if they wanted late-model aircraft. After all, there were a LOT more F4U-1, -1A, and -1Ds around than F4U-4s. The Corsair hauled a bit more bomb tonnage and was better equipped for bomb hauling. The Hellcat was never designed for that task, but it certainly gave a lot of reseve pilots some great fun in a peacetime Navy.

My thoughts are they stayed with a proven good performer of choice (could really have been either plane) until jets could catch up with carrier requirements. Once they did, the only piston that stayed in production and service was the Skyraider (I am not counting planes like the S2F since it wasn't a "fighter"), and the Skyraider has been discussed in here at length. It is definitely MY facorite piston attack plane of all times since it is the one that saved my life on several occasions.

Keeping multiple types in service is expensive. You have to train multiple principal mechanics and repair people, muiltiple pilot schools, etc. So once you pick your choice to keep for awhile, you cut costs and draw down the retiring types. Usually they issue them to guard and reserve units untl they become too hard to maintain. By then, there is usually another semi-old type that can be drawn down to guards and reserves.

They are trying desperately to retire the -10 today desite knowing we can't replace it with the F-35. But they have to justify the most expoensive aircraft in history somehow ... that's another story best left to another thread. I'm not sure who wants to risk a plane taht costs as much as an F-35 going after a flak battery, but if they're going to fly them, they have to have a purpose, don't they? The point is, you pick a platform or platforms, support them, and "retire" the supply chain / acquisition / maintenance chain for the types you elect not to keep.

In theory it is cheaper but if you leave capability gaps and then, for some reason or another, NEED the lost capability, it is tough to reactivate it unless you maintain something like "flyable storage." That can be VERY expensive since flyable storage requires regular maintenance. Getting an older plane out of Davis Monthan and returning it to flight status is NOT cheap. And you have to find people qualified to operate, too.

Please don't interpret this as a put-down of the Corsair. No way. The Corsair happened to be the choice made by the people maing the choices at the time. Had they chosen the Hellcat, then we'd be having the discussion the other way.

In point of fact, the F4U-4 was a better plane than the F6F-5 in late 1945. I don't know if the Hellcat could have jumped to new levels of performance had they made major improvements to it, but I'm sure it would have been an expensive development effort to make a Hellcat do what the F4U-4 and newer versions could do ... and the F4U-4 was already in production flying when the war ended, so there is no way to justify developing something you already have. Had I been making the choice of either the F4U-4 and F6F-5, I'd have chosen the F4U-4, too.

Had the war continued, the Hellcats would probably have been in action to the end unless the end was so far down the pike that jets replaced pistons before the end of the war. Glad THAT didn't happen.

I know the Navy crews were glad to get planes with hydraulic wing fold. I know several guys who got thrown 10 - 15 feet on their backs when trying to fold Hellcat wings. If nobody else did, the wing folders wanted the Hellcat replaced or, at minumum, a hydraulic pump fitted! If you get in the way of our TBF Avenger today, it will pick you up and throw you a good, long way and not even notice you were standing there.

Here's a post-maintinace hydraulic checkout.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bh3CKw_HLk

It doesn't LOOK fast unless you are standing where the wing is going. I can guarantee it will FEEL fast when it hits you.

We had a couple of guys run around behind a Skyraider once just when he was doing startup, to get some cool pics ... without asking or even checking with the pilot. The prop blast blew them through 2 - 3 rollovers along the asphalt. Their cameras were both broken and they needed the first aid kit. That was some years back.

After laughing for awhile, we helped them and now put ropes around our planes for crowd control during public events. The public now must stay inside the museum property and they don't even want volunteers out there during public startups unelss you have had fire guard training. Too much chance of having things go wrong for the untrained. If they are just going out for unscheduled flights, no problem if you are one of the people who helps with planes. But for public demos, they want only the crew assigned near the aircraft. Makes perfect sense. You don't see any untrained people on a carrier deck either.

 

[GregP]

Here is the Hellcat's wing fold:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r9I--M7owE

Look about 1:45 - 1:55 for wing fold. It HAS a hydraulic system to lock and unlock the pins, but the actual wing fold is manual. If the wing starts forward and you are in the way, it can be a BIG surprise.

 

[gjs238]

In point of fact, the F4U-4 was a better plane than the F6F-5 in late 1945. I don't know if the Hellcat could have jumped to new levels of performance had they made major improvements to it, but I'm sure it would have been an expensive development effort to make a Hellcat do what the F4U-4 and newer versions could do ... and the F4U-4 was already in production flying when the war ended, so there is no way to justify developing something you already have. Had I been making the choice of either the F4U-4 and F6F-5, I'd have chosen the F4U-4, too.

F6F-6?
(XF6F-6)

 

[GregP]

Take your pick. By 1945, the F4U was more developed than the F6F. I don't think it was anything the Hellcat could not have been persuaded to do aerodynamically, but there is little point in inventing something twice.

It would be interesting to see a "Super Hellcat," but I am unaware of such a beast ever being built or even drawn up for posterity. I could make an educated guess, but there is no point. As far as I know, it wasn't ever real.

The real-life "Super Hellcat" was the F8F Bearcat.