Tom's World - 10OCT2024 - Museum Aircraft - 5

This is a series of photos, all taken at the US Naval Air Museum on base at NAS Pensacola, of US Naval frontline fighters made by Grumman Aircraft introduced to service between the years of 1935 to 1970.

In that short time, front line aircraft evolved from biplanes with open cockpits and a couple of .30 cal MGs as armament to jets at the edge of the atmosphere firing supersonic radar guided missiles from close to 100 miles away. Top speeds went from 260 MPH to 1,560 MPH and rate of climb from around 2,000 FPM (feet per minute) to around 50,000 FPM. State of the art evolved even faster if the 1950’s design F-4 is taken into account.

The subject of these pictures is US Naval frontline fighters originally introduced from 1935 to 1970.

F3: The only aircraft in this series not labeled a cat of some description. The F3 was introduced in 1935 and used as the basis of design for the much more successful and capable F4F. There might have been at least some F3’s around in the Navy at the start of WWII but not many.

F4F Wildcat: The Wildcat was the Navy’s frontline fighter through 1942 and until September 1943 when it was replaced by the F6F. The F4F’s main adversary was the Japanese Zero which outclassed the F4F in a number of aspects. The Navy pilots had to be incredibly brave to get into fights with a much superior fighter. Two things happened: First a mostly intact Zero was found on an Alaskan island, refurbished and intensively tested. A large Achilles heel for the Zero was discovered: in a dive at speed, the Zero’s ailerons froze and it could not maneuver, especially to the right. If you got into a fight with Zeros, dive away, don’t even try to mix it up, or you will die. The second leveling is a result of the Japanese decision to leave their pilots on frontline service until they died or were wounded beyond any possibility of further service. The Americans took their best pilots and shipped them back to become instructors. The Japanese entered the war with supply of the best combat pilots in the world. 18-20 months later of near constant combat atritted that supply to a fraction. By the 1944 Marianas “Turkey Shoot” there were nearly no well trained Japanese pilots still living and functional to face the hoards of well trained American pilots in their then new and far superior fighters.

F6F Hellcat: Speaking of new and far superior fighters, The Hellcat and its contemporary, the F7 Corsair, would be that. The F6 Hellcat combined with the atritted Japanese skilled pilot pool certainly changed the dynamic of Pacific Theater air combat. The F4F shot down 5,600 Japanese aircraft with a kill to loss rate of 19:1. Admittedly, the average Japanese pilot in 1945 was not even a shadow of an equal to the pilot pool in 1941. Despite the competition of the US Corsair, the F6F was the numerically dominant US fighter in the theater until the end of the war.

F8F Bearcat: Bearcats were a stripped and lightened improvement on the F6, with significantly improved performance in the metrics of agility, climb and speed. A little too late though, they were just being introduced as the war ended. You still see racing versions of F8’s at Reno and other pylon racing events.

F14 TomCat: F14’s of “Top Gun” fame were the frontline Naval fighter, replacing the F4 starting in 1970 until being retired with the last units leaving service in around 2006. They were heavy, gas hogs, maintenance heavy, complex, expensive but damned effective. It’s fighter replacement, the multirole F18, isn’t as effective as a pure fighter