Best Grumman 'Cat' plane (1 Viewer)

Your favorite Grumman 'Cat' plane

  • F4F Wildcat

    Votes: 10 16.1%
  • F6F Hellcat

    Votes: 24 38.7%
  • F8F Bearcat

    Votes: 19 30.6%
  • F-14 Tomcat

    Votes: 9 14.5%

  • Total voters
    62

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The Hellcat and the Corsair were better than the Wildcat, they should be as they entered the war much later. But I love the Wildcat, it looks like a barrel of my favorite Belgian Beer with wings attached and you gotta love the bicycle chain driven under carriage. And it was quite a good a/c in it's time frame.
 
Normally I'd hate to dredge old threads, but I must say, I love everything good and Grumman. I voted, obviously, for the Hellcat, Wildcat would be second, followed by Bearcat. I've gotten pictures of most of the 'cats'. That reminds me, someone mentioned making a gallery or something like that, how do I do that? Or do I just make a thread in the Aircraft pictures thread?
 
Deffinately the Tiger cat I took some video a couple of years ago I'll dig it out and post it again on here could that plane climb or what.
The fuslage is not much wider that the pilots shoulders they even had to offset the nose wheel to fit it in, its llike a flying pencil with two bloody great motors bolted on.
 
For sheer climbing ability though, the F8F rocks. It would go from a full stop to 10,000 feet in 96 seconds. For a prop, that is insane!

Big F8F fan..Two birds I was shock once I got up close too ...One was the F7F do to it being so big ..And the curves and the beauty of the F8F made me a fan...And they were all in one room in Palm Springs ...
 
I have a tough time on this one. I have known three or four pilots including Captain Jimmy "Doc" Savage, and F6F ace who swore the F7F was the hottest and most fun to fly recip fighter they ever flew - and all had time in the F6F, F7F and F8F and F4U.

If I had one choice personally to pick to fight with I believe I lean to the F8F.
 
well, I'm the odd man out it seems. i love the Tomcat. They were absolutely awsome to see in the air, and man the things they were capable of... , carried the phoenix missile like wyatt earps six gun, and were mean when it came to carrying ordinace as well
 
I'd have to go with the Bearcat.What a rate of climb.Too bad it did not see serious combat in WW II.
Ed
 
I picked the F4F as my "favorite" because for a little more than a year and a half, the USN, against a very competent IJN, had no other carrier based fighter and it held it's own. Without the Wildcat, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal all might have been lost. The Hellcat arrived in August , 1943, but it shared the work with the Corsair. The Wildcat went on and served during the whole war off of CVEs and the corpulent little bird did a workmanlike job in spite of it's looks.
 
Wasn't there an older version of this allowing votes for less famous 'cats'? Anyway my favorite is the F9F Panther, first jet fighter to down another jet fighter in combat (where both sides agree that's what happened), and 5:1 overall score (again as counted by each sides' losses) over the theoretically much superior MiG-15.

Joe
 
I voted for the F4F. Even when I was a kid, I was intrigued by that funky undercarriage. I know, its silly, but there it is.

That 'funky' undercarriage is quite interesting

1. I think it was more or less the same as used in the Grumman Duck amphibian

2. Was originally designed by Loening company

3. Was Hand Cranked - and quite hard work apparently


J2F-3_NAS_Jax_1940-2.jpg
 

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