Wildcat

CLAWS OF THE "OBSOLETE"

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, I well remember reading several articles about new U.S. fighter development in the highly acclaimed aviation magazine Aero Digest. This magazine, which was conIL sidered to be the expert voice in aviation, could always be counted on to pompously describe new U.S. military aircraft as being "obsolete before it left the drawing board" when comparing U.S. efforts with British and German innovations. Its statement of "absolute fact" was always a death sentence for any fighter and all who had anything to do with its development. The Grumman Wildcat, Brewster Buffalo, Curtiss P-40, Douglas SBD Dauntless, Bell Airacobra and others were all condemned until December 7, 1941, when few opinions-if any-of military aircraft were permitted to be printed. Considering the U.S. war efforts at the time, it was fortunate that those aircraft couldn't read Aero Digest. On November 11, 1942, with only 424 hours total time in commercial aircraft, I was hired as a Grumman engineering test pilot. Within the first week, I checked out in the 400hp Grumman G-44 Widgeon, the 900hp G-21 Goose and the beautiful 1700hp TBF-1 Avenger torpedo bomber. I didn't think life could get any better, even with all the hundreds of beautiful young girls who also worked at Grumman. Despite this distraction, I had one very strong, passionate urge: to fly the Wildcat fighter!

Each day as I climbed into an Avenger, I enviously watched the other Grumman test pilots fly the small and feisty-looking Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat. Like a schoolkid on Monday wishing it were Saturday, I wanted to fly it ASAP. By that time, the Wildcat was fabled and had at last managed to beat the notorious Japanese Zero in the battles of Wake Island, Midway, Guadalcanal and Coral Sea. Several of the new experimental and more powerful Grumman F6F-3 Hellcats were flying, but I was sure that with my shortage of hours, I would not be privileged to sit in that aircraft for a long time to come. But I didn't have to have to wait long: on the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor-December 7, 1942-I was scheduled to fly an F4F-4 Wildcat!

I now realize why I was pushed into the Wildcat so fast. Flight Operations was under awesome pressure to deliver as many Wildcats to the waiting Navy delivery pilots as quickly as they could to replenish the depleted squadrons; there had been all too many early combat losses and training accidents.

Wildcat's built-in bear traps

There were four hidden "bear traps" in the Wildcat; they were explained to pilots in specific and anecdotal details that needed to be learned and, as you will soon see, respected.

The cockpit of my 1964 Mooney is much more complex than that of the Wildcat. The Wildcat had a simple, manual, 31-turn hand crank to raise and lower the landing gear, a hand crank to open and close the cowl flaps, a vacuum landing-flap system that had no alternative source of power if there was a vacuum failure, a manually operated arresting hook and standard engine controls. The handy fuel system had a selector for the 97-gallon main tank and the 27-gallon auxiliary tank. Instruments, radio and most other switches were generally similar to those in the Avenger. The cockpit pictures show that although it was sparsely outfitted, it was comfortable and roomy enough for a six-foot-four pilot.

The high torque of the Wildcat's 1200hp Pratt ix Whitney engine required that the pilot set the rudder trim tab to three marks nose right (almost full right tab) to help counteract its definite tendency to veer to the left off the runway during takeoff. If a pilot forgot his checklist and left the tab at neutral, he would have to apply an abnormal amount of right rudder with very high forces. I had seen quite a few Wildcats veer beyond the far left of the Grumman runway when their overworked delivery pilots forgot to properly preset the rudder trim tab. A later model Wildcat-the FM-2-had a much bigger fin and rudder, but only after many accidents and after 3,000 small-fin and -rudder Wildcats had been delivered. Even the FM-2 required two marks of nose-right tab for takeoff.

Although the manual landing-gear retraction system (which had been used in 746 aircraft that Grumman had built since 1930) was simple in design, its operation left a lot to be desired. The handle was on the right side of the cockpit, so the pilot had to take his left hand off the throttle (fervently hoping that he had tightened the throttle friction before takeoff), move it to the stick and use his right hand to move the landing-gear lever to the retract position and complete the strenuous task of cranking 31 turns to retract the gear! After completing this arduous retraction cycle, he had to switch his hands back to their regular positions. It's no wonder that many pilots felt the flight was almost finished after the landing gear had at last been retracted! In early Grumman aircraft, this retraction and extension cycle led to several fatal accidents. On its trip to the radio jack, the radio cable from the pilot's helmet drooped close to the landing-gear handle. On several occasions, it became caught in the cranking cycle and pulled its pilot's head down below the cockpit rail; this resulted in a crash. The Navy's quick fix to this problem was to install a very simple quick-disconnect at the pilot's helmet. Once, my helmet cable got caught in the retraction cycle, and I thanked the Navy profusely for that retrofit.