ARP Videos Navy Birds Checkout Series: F6F-3, SB2A4 and TBF

Flight Journal, Jun 1998 by Farmer, James H

ARP Videos Navy Birds Checkout Series: F6F-3, SB2A4 and TBF

Video may be ordered from ARP Videos: (800) 843-4672; $29.95.

"Navy Birds" is an hour-long compilation of three WW II U.S. Navy warbird checkout films. Each black-and-white segment runs approximately 20 minutes and offers above average visual clarity, considering the half-century age of the original 16mm footage.

The first film presents wartime Navy pilots with a no-nonsense, stepby-step cockpit rundown of a factoryfresh F6F-3 Hellcat. The checkout includes preflight cockpit procedures, a cartridge start, taxi techniques, airfield and carrier configurations for takeoffs and landings, basic in-flight power settings, stall techniques and basic aerobatics.

As fascinating and as hard to watch as a crash on the freeway is the checkout of the Brewster SB2A4 Buccaneer-a flying abomination if ever there was one! The dash-four displayed in the film was originally produced for export to the Dutch, but was subsequently repossessed by the USN and employed as a Marines trainer, particularly with VMF(N) 531. And did they have their hands full! Viewers will be amused-as long as they don't actually have to fly this turkey-by the dive bomber's squirrelly tailwheel, which seems to do its own dance on taxiing and merrily porpoises the tail up and down with absurd abandon on landing. And, oh yes, there is the little matter of the ailerons tending to create slow roll conditions in the aircraft at moderate speeds! This has to be seen to be believed!

The Buccaneer, however, does make viewers ready to appreciate a real gem of a warbird when they see one-Grumman's TBF Avenger. Heavy on the controls to be sure and "not designed for any violent maneuvers," it nonetheless could deliver twice the load (2,000 pounds) of the aforementioned Buccaneer to the target as a torpedo bomber, horizontal bomber, glide bomber, or scout. In its class, the Avenger had no wartime equaland it shows!

-James H. Farmer