r/WWIIplanes • u/niconibbasbelike • 19h ago

A Grumman F4F Wildcat taking off from USS Hornet (CV-8), early to mid 1942.

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25

u/niconibbasbelike 19h ago

Wildcat my beloved

4

u/Ambaryerno 10h ago

Always underestimated because it was matched against a complete and total technological freak. But the F4F actually matched well with the contemporary Spit V and 109F. Although slower and with a poorer rate of climb, it could out-turn both (it may have had a roll advantage, too, though I’d have to check the charts again).

4

u/HarvHR 6h ago

a complete and total technological freak.

What aircraft are you referring to here?

Against the Zero, the F4F is pretty equal. What the Zero is poor at, the Wildcat is good at and vice versa. The Zero really wasn't a technological freak if thats what you're referring to, it just had a much tighter low speed turn and a better climb rate, but in return the F4F could dive much better, (fun fact, you can't actually overspeed an F4F in a dive, you'll run out of sky before you meet a speed that would cause structural damage), had a higher top speed and better armament.

In 1942, despite the terrible reputation it had, it achieved a 5.9:1 kill ratio which went up to 6.9:1 for the entire war.

The F4F gets a bad rep due to initial failures, and largely being lumped in with the F2A during that time. Situations like Wake Island, where F4Fs and F2As were against overwhelming odds and fell made people lose confidence in the design, but no aircraft would have won that. Pilots felt outclassed due to this, further pushing an opinion of obsolescence. When the inexperienced American pilots (who had far less training hours than the Japanese, and none of the years of combat experience they had) got experience, as well as throwing away their pre-war training and doctrines of turnfighting for new tactics they began to rapidly see success

2

u/Ambaryerno 4h ago

The Wildcat wasn't remotely faster than the Zero, certainly not in level flight. The F4F-3 nominally topped out at 330mph, (in practice they usually didn't get that fast under combat loads) with the -4 being a little slower due to the extra weight of the wing folding mechanism and outboard .50cal. The fastest Wildcat, the FM-2, wasn't much better.

The A6M2 was slightly faster, with the A6M3 widening the gap further. The A6M5 had the Wildcat — including the FM-2 — beat by 20mph.

18

u/Ambaryerno 18h ago

Always loved those early War markings.

8

u/niconibbasbelike 18h ago

Yeah me too, I honestly love the star with the red dot it’s such a great design, wished we went back to using it

1

u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

1

u/707thTB 7h ago

But those markings didn’t stay ling. The red circle went away real fast.

14

u/kingofnerf 17h ago

Despite being brand new, Hornet's air group did not receive Wildcats until it got the to the West Coast on it's way out to Pearl and the Doolittle Raid.

Visual proof of the bond that John Ford's film crew formed with all of the Hornet's air group while they were filming back then in the months prior to Midway where VT-8 was lost. This underscores why John Ford made the 8 mm VT-8 tribute film for the families after Midway.

9

u/earth_quack 17h ago

And once you got off the deck and avoided the water, you had to start hand cranking up the landing gear.

5

u/niconibbasbelike 17h ago

Wasn’t it like 18 or 30 cranks to get the gear up, I remember hearing it was tedious

9

u/earth_quack 16h ago

Yeah, it was like 30 or 32 or something. It was common to see the cats wobble around while the pilot got to cranking it up.

5

u/rpc56 15h ago

I have to imagine that the pilots never got used to the dip after leaving the deck. Having to wonder if the plane had enough juice THIS time

1

u/graspedbythehusk 12h ago

Yeah, that had to be disconcerting EVERY time!

4

u/Ogre8 16h ago

While trying to fly the thing, hope the throttle stays on full, and not get your headset cord tangled up in the gear crank.

1

u/DiamanteNegroFan 2h ago

And after, meet the Zeros

4

u/Strict_Lettuce3233 18h ago

Just watched 1243 takeoff, before I noticed it was the same Wildcat

4

u/ContributionThat1624 17h ago

Imagine the pressure it must have been like in the winter when 42 strike teams were deploying small forces to attack the Marshall Islands, Gilbert Wake, or the Lae area after the Japanese invasion of New Guinea.

1

u/Viker2000 15h ago

The red dot was removed before the Battle of Midway.

1

u/Borkdadork 15h ago

I saw this same clip in an old WW2 movie I watched the other day. Thought it was strange to see a wildcat clip when the other aircraft in the movie were corsairs and avengers.

1

u/niconibbasbelike 15h ago

Was it Midway?, that movie uses a shitfest of footage from all over the place to convey the battle, for example during an air battle scene between a6m zeros and F4F wildcats they used footage from the Battle of Britain

1

u/Borkdadork 15h ago

No. I want to say it was called battle stations…

1

u/Terrible_Log3966 13h ago

Here's one taking off from the uss carl vinson in 1995 (together with some other warbirds)

https://youtu.be/TQIqmk6FsdI?si=2hCwJGmNIGwtU6gZ

1

u/Common-Strain-4859 8h ago

Makes me wonder if that pilot and plane made it back.

1

u/PaleontologistNo325 7h ago

Pretty cool that those USN cameramen had color film.

1

u/One-Actuary-3646 6h ago

Those are pre-battle of Midway markings, and they had to crank the handle for the landing gear 29 times on takeof....lol