F4F Wildcat / Martlet
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- Опубліковано 4 чер 2021
- Against the odds, Grumman's tubby little 'cat' clawed its way back from obscurity to 'hold the line' and set new aircraft carrier aviation standards. The F4F Wildcat, known as the Martlet in Fleet Air Arm service, proved to be a rugged and stoic little fighter - even though it was not as fast as its land-based opponents. And it remained in operation on escort carriers until the end of World War II.
Note: I missed a change in the commentary. At 19:26 the speaker changes to David Wright (893 NAS)
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The sabotage accusations had its root in the Wright 1830 constructed by Ford.
B24s built by Ford had issues too. But may have been Ford's Quality control. Nobody really
Got to the bottom of it.
I had a substitute teacher in high school who was an industrial spy during WW2 at war plants. I think he was with the War Production Board. He observed and reported many acts of sabotage. From the way he spoke it sounded like most of the culprits were self important jerks with few motives other than just to cause trouble.
@@ronaldrhatigan7652 Yeah,that sounds about right. Some accused Henry Ford because of his dealing with Hitler,but he dealt with Stalin,too.
English passport?
1 second ago
There were plenty of people in America of predominantly German and Italian origination who resented supplying the British with american aircraft Charles Lindenburg had plenty of supporters.The Brewster Factory manufactured Corsair Fighters these were very poorly manufactured sabotage was rife this was because they had a mainly Italian workforce who were resentful of how things had turned out.... The Brewster Corsairs party piece amongst many other ingeniously contrived challenges was that the wings could fall off at any time. Even when being used for training pilots the Brewster Corsairs had built up a fearfully bad reputation...
The american pilots in the know refused to fly them and they were rather cynically passed off to the British as a Lend lease donation to their Allies. After loosing a few pilots and then finding and fixing the faults we found the Fleet Air Arm used these basically superb rebuilt aircraft in the Fleet Air Arm on our carriers in the Atlantic Arctic Mediterranean Indian and Pacific war zone's with some considerable success.... As an aside....Charles Lindenburg proved to be a great asset during the war he went out to the Pacific and sorted out the severely miscalibrated carburation problems of the P38 the P40 the lockheed lightning and all the radial engined front line fighters including the P47 including the Corsair and bombers the Americans used in all theatre's.from B17 to B29...a clever guy...
@@englishpassport6590 Lindberg also shot down a couple of Japanese aircraft...
@@ronaldrhatigan7652 interesting. I must admit I can’t get my head around the mentality of people who do that kind of thing. People do stupid things sometimes but that! I just can’t see what they get out of it. I can’t fathom the cognitions.
How refreshing that when they talk about an airplane that they are showing footage of the actual model of aircraft rather than stock footage of similar looking types. Well done indeed!
The Wildcat served throughout the war. It was the great Ace maker of the USN and USMC early on. Joe Foss, who was awarded the Medal of Honor, scored all of his 26 victories in the F4F.
And he did it in record time, from October until the beginning of December, 1942. And he did it against what remained of the IJN's elite pilots and aircrew. What the US Navy and US Marine Corps fighter pilots did from the inception of the war until the practical end of the Guadalcanal/South Pacific Campaign in the Wildcat was remarkable given the experience and excellence of the veteran Japanese pilots flying the superb Zero. And a lot of credit is also due to the USAAF, RAAF and RNZAF that fought alongside the USN and USMC during those trying times.
Greatest US fighter pilot of the war.
Captain Eric "Winkle" Brown. What an aviator!!!! Probably flown more different types of aircraft than any man alive. Superior intellectual, humble and an all around very decent man. I wish I could just be in a room with him to listen to him speak about flying. A national treasure to Great Britain is putting it mildly.
Shame he died in 2016... 😢
Including most, if not all German types. Even the rockets!!
I just discovered this channel. How could I have not found this earlier????
Captain Brown is a national treasure for Great Britain!!! He's flown more different types of aircraft in his life than possibly any other person. Humble yet highly intelligent and has fantastic story telling skills!!!!
u knappin😅
This channel deserves more views; thank you for recording and preserving real history instead of "infotainment". If nothing else in honour of the fallen and veterans as well as lessons from the past for the future.
It's about them. And the ingenuity and innovation of those who designed and built the machines they operated. Not about me.
Yeah, here here.
Hear hear
The F4 is probably my favorite fighter from WWII. It was not the fastest, not the most manuverable, but they gave the Japanese and Germans hell, and brought their pilots home. I read a book about the battle of Midway when I was a kid that cemented my love for the F4. The F6 was a HUGE improvement, but the F4 started making naval aces first! Great video and interviews!
Great stories and great Royal Navy pilots, the F4F often is given a bad reviews when compared with the Zero, but it had it's strengths too, and were appreciated. Captain Eric Brown was the first interview, and that got my attention right away.
Thanks for pointing that out, I went back to relisten because that guy is a legend.
John Lundstrom's two-volume First Team books give a detailed and comprehensive account of the US Navy's fighter pilots and tactics that helped blunt the Japanese offensive into the New Guinea/Solomons area of operations. For more detailed information on USMC air operations, Robert Sherrod's History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II is a must. For a more generalized view of air power in that area of operations, Eric Bergerud's Fire in The Sky is excellent.
My grandfather flew Wildcats in WWII. He told me all about raising the gear. He also said experienced pilots would release the landing gear, dive then pull up. As long as you you kept your right arm out of the way, inertia would lower the gear.
Angry bumble bee it’s got Eric’s stamp of approval , Kilometres try flippin knots
Really enjoyed this vid. Nice to know the Wildcat was appreciated and thought of so highly.
Love the Wildcat, along with the Hurricane and P-40, saved the allies bacon, all were in mass production at the start of hostilities, served around the globe, under the insignia of many nations, with distinction, never sexy, just solid get the job done aircraft
Agreed. The other plane that does not get near enough love is the P-47 Thunderbolt. It seems the Spitfire and Mustang, while amazing and beautiful air superiority fighters, always take all the limelight.
@@alecfoster5542 F4U Corsair. Was still fighting in Korea. In service from 1942 to 1952 and was used by some foreign air forces into 1969/70.
the p39 airacobra too
@@cliff8669 For sure! It vied with the Hellcat as the best American fighter in the Pacific and the Brits had success with it in the FAA. I had a friend who was a US Marine in the Pacific, and he used to love the TV show Black Sheep Squadron. He said the plots and writing on the show were silly. He only watched it to admire the planes he used to service as a mechanic.
They were completely unremarkable but were available and good enough to hold their own with a competent pilot at the stick. When the Spitfires, Mustangs and Hellcats became available in bigger numbers, it was game over for the axis.
Priceless interview by Eric Brown, love the collection of video. I got to talk with many aces in USN while putting on air combat symposiums in the 90’s. They said that hand crank was murder if you let it slip . They would dive on Zeros & avoid dogfighting. Your site is a gem for WW2 buffs, thank you
Tough plane , tougher pilots and ground crew . Such brave men and we're losing more and more of them with each passing day .
I've always loved the Grumman 'Cats'. Excellent airplanes with a timeless look. In particular, I admire the wing fold mechanism. A twist and fold. Very compact. Perfect for carrier operations.
Kermit weeks has a video of him flying his wildcat you should check him out yes his wildcat flies it's freaking awesome
Great hearing these stories! Martlet served them well, that helped them pave the way for advancements in carrier aviation. Not sure most understand just how brilliant the ideas were that we adopted and use still today.
To coin a phrase "Cracking show", well put together. The stories that need to be told.
I imagine that the aircrew recordings were made some time ago, as a lot of these guys are long-gone now, including my dad and his comrades in 852 NAS (Avengers)., a lot of whom were trained in the States at Gross Ile, Pensacola and Jacksonville. I believe, though I'm not sure, that someone visited him, shortly before he passed, and interviewed him for a TV show, perhaps Canadian. It would be nice to see/hear that.
I have to sometimes remind myself that the F4F didn't just only fight A6Ms.
Wonderful to have this audio records of these brave brave men and crews,a very underrated aircraft but refreshing to hear it beind a good solid robust fighter from the guys who relied on them for their lives .
Am I the only guy that hates seeing those wonderfully crafted props hitting the deck?
Huge cringe! At 16:50, the pilot seems to feel the same way...
Maybe they should just lower the deck ?
The American carriers decks were made of wood .... the British carriers decks were made of high impact steel... The British used to shorten their props by 2 - 3 inches this worked very well. They reasoned that the prop tip's were usually inefficient due to being close to supersonic so it didn't make any difference. After 1944 any potential shortfall of aircraft performance they encountered for any reason was usually taken care of by using Ricardo specified very high octane fuel ....and also bumping up the delivery from the superchargers. Their spark plugs didn't load up they used K.L.G. english made sparking plugs they were the best spark plugs in the World - bar none .....
@@englishpassport6590 I think it was done to prevent “pecking”.
@@PeteCourtier I suspect that such pecking ...would soon play havock with the variable pitch propellor mechanicals of any WW2 Aircraft Carrier fighter plane...
I just love these films. Combining real footage with real commentary from the men who did the dirty work - it’s the best content on UA-cam. I watch them again and again. Wonderful. Thank you.
I watch a lot of WWII and aviation documentaries. This series on the various aircraft of the time is the best at matching the video with what is being said that I’ve ever seen. Remarkable how the pilots recollection of the aircraft is displayed in real time. It must’ve taken many hours of editing to have this come out right. Very well done!
Thanks. Yes, it does take a while finding footage. And matching it to the narrative is a slow process. The worst part is when I run out of relevant footage. I waste a lot of time hesitating and searching again at that point
@@ArmouredCarriers Thanks for your return message. I've watched more of your videos today and I feel even more sure that these are among the finest I have ever seen. The way you do these videos is exactly the way i would like to do one if i had the opportunity to. You have a subscriber for life!
What a great series, Armored Carriers.
Thanks, Armoured Carrier, for pointing out that the British aircraft in Operation Torch were painted in US colors.
Yes, that was very interesting information that I never heard of before!
I’m building a model of a Wildcat at the moment (Tamiya 1/48) and in that context, this is one of the most fascinating videos I’ve seen in a long time time! Thank you!!
This was great! Very informative on British air arm activities! Thanks!
Really good, probably your best yet. Big fan.
The last of the Grumman’s;
Japan, 2021 EA-6B Prowler, not yet decommissioned, so I’ve heard.
Gotta’ love that gold impregnated canopy.
*cough* Iranian F-14s.
I've come to like most of the Grumman planes. Nice that the Prowler is still flying.
And the Iranians are still flying F-14 Tomcats.
Hawkeyes, with no replacement in sight.
@@petesheppard1709 actually expect the Osprey to fill that role.
@@WALTERBROADDUS The Osprey is indeed replacing the Grumman C-2 Grayhound for COD duties. I have seen mentions of an AEW Osprey, but nothing definitive.
Gotta love the Wildcat, it did it's job too the best of it's abilities and as a direct result of it's positives and negatives we got the F6F Hellcat, one of the greatest aircraft of that era.
I often think of the idea of what if something like the 56 fighter group had hellcats instead or corsairs? . With the idea to build models correctly but Mark them in the group stick would never ever have seen them yeah I'm a weirdo
Wow...great job. The videos are superb.
Thnx again. Real quality.
The Hellcat did not totally replace the Wildcat. The Wildcat flew off the smaller escort carriers until the end of the war. Some of the video footage is of the FM-2 Wildcat VI which was flying in 1945.
A lot of effort went into the F4F in its secondary role to improve its range and usability period part of which was lightning the airframe. I think they even equipped some F4F with only for 50 caliber machine guns instead of 6.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer Yes, airframes lightened (FM-1 I think) and reduction back to 4 guns but more ammunition - same as earlier F4-F's. FM-2 had increased engine power thus the taller fin.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer Early Wildcats had 4 50 calibers. That was changed to 6 but many pilots in the Pacific prefered the 4 layout as it gave them plenty of firepower for dealing with Japanese aircraft and there was room for a lot more ammunition and thus more firing time.
The Wildcat along with the P-38 were the only two American fighters that were produced before the war started and were still being produced when the war ended.
In terms of front line positioning, it definitely was replaced, they aren't sending Wildcats up against zeros where they can send Hellcats
The "WILDER WILDCAT" FM-2 The Eastern Aircraft Division of General Motors made in Linden NJ
The SBD, was an Outstanding dive bomber, and held its own in a dogfight.
Always good to hear the great Eric Brown!
Great video, well done.
Excellent insite of the Men & Airplanes
They have a restored Wildcat at Chicago O'hare that had been fished out of lake Michigan. I was amazed at how small it was.
Is this the Midway Wildcat?
@@vincentsimon3184 The plane at O'hare went into Lake Michigan during a training accident back during WW2.
@@jimfarmer7811 Not widely known that the US Navy converted two side wheel excursion steamers to aircraft carriers for pilot training on Lake Michigan. The USS Wolverine and the USS Sable. Thousands of pilots trained on these ships.
@@edwardpate6128 it's been a while since I was there but I think they had picture of one of the side wheel boats on the base that held the plane.
Isn’t the plane at O’Hare a Dauntless?
Awesome video
a great video about a great plane!it is said that the very first batch of martlets for the RN,the ones with underrated engines mentioned,were actualy for the RHAF that were to arrive around March /Appril to Greece and got held up by the Brittish in the fear of a collapse in Greece!
An angry bumblebee!!!! Epic!!!!!
'Great video!
To be fair to the Seafire, it was a superb land-based but short-range fighter adapted to the carrier roll. The resulting adaptation added way further reducing the range of the aircraft. The land-based Spitfire variant had a bit of a reputation because its landing gear was somewhat fragile. Johnny Johnson even made a hard Landing with the Spitfire and drove the landing gear through the top of the wing on one side. The shortcomings of British naval aircraft was the result of the RAF having control over the aircraft and construction resources. They own the planes and Pilots early in the war period and then I think long came the Fleet air arm. Please correct me if I'm wrong
I think you are pretty much right. I think the RN got control of its aircraft about 1938 or 1939, so shortly before war was declared, and too late to quickly change the RAF's choice of carrier planes. The great advantage for the USN was that it controlled its own aircraft from the beginning. It could design everything for use aboard an aircraft carrier. That also meant that the USN had admirals who had flown since about 1915, senior officers who appreciated aircraft and carriers. (Although two of the most important, Frank Jack Fletcher and Raymond Spruance, had been cruiser and battleship commanders before 1941. More on that in a recent video by the great Drachinifel).
"A beer keg,on a roller skate,run through with an ironing board "
Good description. It reminds me of reading of the Avenger described as a 'pregnant F4F'
Brilliant!
Very informative.
Capt Eric Winkle Brown RIP
Nice footage and witnesses.
One thing I noticed: the landing officer job seemed a tough one. You can see it in their face.
its amazing wired how all Martlet's had painted they FAA roundels with US navy colours during the Operation torch against the Vichy France a very smart move for the FAA in support the US landing in Algeria.
If they liked the Wildcat I bet they fell in love with the Hellcat!
I don’t think they ever picked up the Hellcat. I’m pretty sure they jumped strait to the Corsair...
@@thatoneguywhodoesthatthing913 Which was a fortunate thing. The U.S. Navy hadn't figured out how to do carrier landings and fobbed it off on the the Marines and Royal Navy. The Fleet Air Arm pilots figured out a wide turn approach and that was passed on to the U.S. Navy just in time as the IJN was "doing the Kamikaze thing."
The royal navy absolutely used Hellcats, although only on Indomitable and the Implacable class becuase there double hangar on the ships weren't tall enough for the upwards folding wings of the Corsair. I would assume at least.
@@adamtruong1759 You assume correct. HMS Indomitable went to the Pacific in 1945 with Hellcats as she couldn't carry Corsairs. But there weren't enough Hellcats available to the RN for the Implacable and Indefatigable at that time (though some night variants later operated from HMS Formidable, from memory). There were a couple of escort carriers operating Hellcats in the Indian Ocean in 1945 also.
Pretty sure some Brits got Hellcats. Saw a pilot interview where he said he loved them and felt like their Japanese opponents were at great disadvantage. Borneo operations I think.
great film
Great video as usual, excellent stories and footage. Eric Brown and Butch O'Hare to boot! Living about 70 miles from the Grumman factory and about 20 from the GM plant that made FM1s and 2s, I would never call a F4F Wildcat a MARTLET! By the way, I have already watched this three times.
English passport?
1 second ago
There were plenty of people in America of predominantly German and Italian origination who resented supplying the British with american aircraft Charles Lindenburg had plenty of supporters.The Brewster Factory manufactured Corsair Fighters these were very poorly manufactured sabotage was rife this was because they had a mainly Italian workforce who were resentful of how things had turned out.... The Brewster Corsairs party piece amongst many other ingeniously contrived challenges was that the wings could fall off at any time. Even when being used for training pilots the Brewster Corsairs had built up a fearfully bad reputation...
The american pilots in the know refused to fly them and they were rather cynically passed off to the British as a Lend lease donation to their Allies. After loosing a few pilots and then finding and fixing the faults we found the Fleet Air Arm used these basically superb rebuilt aircraft in the Fleet Air Arm on our carriers in the Atlantic Arctic Mediterranean Indian and Pacific war zone's with some considerable success.... As an aside....Charles Lindenburg proved to be a great asset during the war he went out to the Pacific and sorted out the severely miscalibrated carburation problems of the P38 the P40 the lockheed lightning and all the radial engined front line fighters including the P47 including the Corsair and bombers the Americans used in all theatre's.from B17 to B29...a clever guy...
@@englishpassport6590br The story here is that Brewser was very badly mismanaged. The original Brewster factory was a vertical work space with elevators taking the aircraft...Buffalos..up and down. The original factory is still standing and I pass on an elevated section of subway when I go into NYC. One of my neighbors worked there before being drafted.
@@joeschenk8400 We were glad to get them our Fleet Air Arm needed them badly, we might never have got them if they had been OK... we soon fixed them. We had built many new 25-30,000 tonne Armoured Deck Fleet Carriers with some support/maintenance Carriers and a few Jeep Carriers plus lend lease escort Carriers with no battleworthy aircraft available to go on them. The Fairey Stringbag was the ideal subkiller for the escort carriers in the Atlantic but it was useless for the Pacific. The Avenger was a revelation to our aircrews we used them all over the Pacific escorted by our new Brewster Corsairs...
The words of Heroes. The greatest British naval aviators.
Great video and a lot learned about it and why the saboteurs, to my knowledge, weren't severely dealt with is unacceptable. Grumman F-4 Wildcat/FM-2/Martlets were under rated and did a hell of a job for what it was. And still an outstanding aircraft with a distinctive sound.
Even after it’s time was supposed to have passed it still performed prodigies against supposedly superior fighters .
Part of that may have been just pure dumb luck and the other part was as the war went on our pilots got better and their good pilots got killed. And we could replace ours.
@@thedeathwobblechannel6539 Yes probably a bit of both .
Excellent video, and commentary from actual servicemen. I hope you will revisit with more combat history, missions etc. very well done.
Interesting the sabotaged engines came from Ford, the namesake would give Hitler 50,000 USD on his birthday before the US was in the war.
I'll probably do a follow up episode ... when / if I find enough combat related commentary on the Martlet.
Thank you for a wonderful piece. Having had three generations of my family work for Grumman and on their planes it is actually heartwarming to hear the stories of British pilots that actually not simply liked but loved the American Import aircraft. Although I do have to ask, what the bloody hell is the deal with British Military Naming conventions. I mean it comes out of the box called "The Wildcat" now there's a name for a fighter! And instead it becomes "The Martlet"? Hmmm? Give me a second I need to look this one up. "Martlet = Some sort of mythical imaginary swallow without any feet". Uh huh? Did the Royal Bureau of Naval Names somehow acquire a private stock warehouse full of opium? Because I'm pretty sure somebody was high as a kite when they cooked that one up. It would also explain the "Flower Class". I mean nothing strikes fear in the heart of the Kriegsmarine quite like facing the onrushing might of the HMS Daisy. (okay I will give them some props for the name "Catalina" which was a cool name for the PBY. Cool enough that the US Navy adopted it.)
Why frighten your opponent with bluster and banter and make him wary when you can make him blase' and unthinkingly underrate the capability of the presumably insignificant killing machine you now have in your possession...
The US would call a plane a GFU-2 or similar, the Brits would make up some really dumb name instead.
Research who named the Mustang and the Lightning. And you might want to lay off the crack yourself, as well.
As the war went on the RN dropped the name "Martlet" and went with "Wildcat". It was too complicated, I think, to call the same plane by two different names.
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 So does " Look, a GFU-2!" Roll trippingly from the tongue? There's a reason NATO has reporting names, not alphanumericl codes feet long.
Wow watching them F4F being catapulted, looks fun. Never saw that before.
Some people didn’t think wartime carriers had catapults.
amazing for the time
Amazing story
Before WW-II, the authorities at the Fleet Air Arm maintained the view that, since aircraft carriers could only accommodate a limited number of aircraft, they should all be multi-role aircraft. As a result, the FAA insisted that their fighter aircraft should also be able to also carry out reconnaissance or bombing missions as well. That was the thinking behind aircraft such as the Fairey Filter and Blackburn Skua. Consequently, those airplanes were fairly adequate for reconnaissance or dive bombing, but not for air-to-air fighting. However, the Japanese and American Navies did not share that philosophy. In their navies fighters were fighters, bombers were bombers and torpedo-planes were torpedo planes.
Near the end, the sight of an Albacore bi-plane in US markings, that seemed soo wrong for some reason. :-)
Your objectives in war are to win and avoid getting your people killed. If you're in a war and something seems stupid but it works then it's not stupid.
False flag Op🤔
Royal Navy aircrsft operating as part of OPERATION TORCH, the invasion of French North Africa , carried the American blue disk and white star national markings,
Yay!!!!! One iv been wating for! 😭😅😅🥰
Hell of a fighter.
A true underdog aircraft that proved itself in combat
Not really an underdog because they were designed to absorb an incredible amount of bullets. They had bullet proof windscreens, self-sealing fuel tanks, armored seats that extended above the pilot's head, engines that kept running after a bullet went through them and no hydraulics so unless a bullet went through a control cable when it was taunt, the cable would flex allowing the bullet to exit the fuselage without damaging the controls. In short it took so many bullets to shoot one down it could be said that it was the accumulation of the weight of too much lead that would cause it to fall from the sky. The zero's by contrast were like paper planes. One well placed shot was often all that was needed to bring it down. No Japanese bomber could stand up to the Wildcat so the Wildcats were extremely good at doing what they were designed to do.
@@danielebrparish4271 … All good points. The Wildcat pilots learned tactics to fight according to their own strengths. If a Japanese aircraft got into the sights of a Wildcat pilot, it died. Nor could a Zero follow a Wildcat in a dive. Perfect for “zoom and boom tactics”. Add the Thatch Weave and the decreasing numbers of skilled Japanese veterans. The tide turned. So i guess even without the introduction of the Corsair and the Hellcat the air war was going to be won.
Funny at 8.00 in, the animation of the Wildcat, when the propeller spins, it was spinning backward.
I have always wondered what would a four broad-bladed propeller with constant-speed pitch have done for the F4F.
That was Huntz Hall of the Bowery Boys movies in the gun clearing shot.
From the training film "Don't be a Dilbert" ...
As someone who is fairly well-versed in most aspects of WWII air war, I was a bit surprised by the markings on the Seafire at 22:55 and then the story about the repainting into US markings! Quite interesting!
BTW, what is the source of the modern-day cockpit footage (e.g. the demonstration of the landing gear cranking)?
The Albacores with American stars at the end should count as a bonus feature.
THANKS! I've always been interested in the use of Martlets; will there be a part 2 describing combat experience?
The landing gear used a chain linkage for retraction. If the pilot's grip slipped, the weight of the gear would cause the hand wheel to spin wildly, often jumping the chain off the sprockets and jamming the gear.
I will do combat experience for all of these videos at some point. Unfortunately, it will probably involve much of the same footage. Or I'll have to find other ways to illustrate. (Most of these vids use most of the available footage ... really is amazing so little survives!)
@@ArmouredCarriers I don't mind you repeating the film; I really want to hear the stories.
I do really like how you also blend in modern footage. In B&W, a lot of it is nearly indistinguishable from the vintage film.
It's pretty telling that the Fleet Air Arm found the F4F Wildcat, which was nearing obsolescence as a frontline fighter (not to denigrate the Wildcat's combat performance in capable hands or its vital role in the early years of the Pacific War), to be a massive improvement over their own fighters.
On an unrelated note, I had no idea that the Wildcat's guns could be recocked in flight.
In 1942, the F4F was the only available replacement for the F3F that had been the USN's front-line fighter in 1940.
So the USN's story isn't all that different to the RN's.
Eric Browne is the man.
Imagine building a plane specifically for carrier use with that undercarriage? Not that I could have done any better. Kept the wings skinny I guess.
The undercarriage was pretty much borrowed from the Grumman J2F duck floatplane-being relatively narrow to allow it to fit inside the central float. I believe there was an intermediate stop in the biplane F3F which was pretty much turned into the F4F by removing one of the wings. So I think it was a case of making do with what was already on hand (however it’s been awhile since I read up on the Grumman development line, so I apologize if I have misremembered and gotten things wrong). One advantage was it had already proven strong enough to take the bearings that carrier planes take every time they land. Albeit at the cost of a strenuous pilot workout getting the things up and then back down!
@@dennisfox8673 yep that is pretty much what it looks likes to me too. F3f minus a wing. It did pretty well for itself though. Love all the Grumman planes. Got a ride on a Grumman Goose from Akutan to Dutch Harbor about 20 yrs ago(or maybe more) It was cool as hell. The Blue Goose I believe they called it.
That gear was a Grumman trademark until the F6F. Given the restrictions of the time, it was the best way to have a folding gear. In fact, a similar system was used in the Curtiss SBC Helldiver. Also, note that the Brewster Buffalo stowed its main wheels in the fuselage, even though the main struts mounted to the wings.
@@petesheppard1709 yep
I would imagine it leaves more room in the wings for guns, ammo, and perhaps fuel. Besides...look at how the wings fold for stowage. That could actually be the main reason for the landing gear placement.
The F4F and all it's variants were the stopgap-try-to-hold on-until-the-F6F can be built. The F6F didn't have it's combat debut until around September 1943. So the F4F (for the U.S.) had to hold down the fort. (The F4U Corsair arrived a few months earlier than the F6F Hellcat but was problematic for carrier operations). The British Hurricane and the Spitfire of course were very good planes. The Spit was a world beater but early versions had very limited range. So for the first year and a half of WW2 the allies struggled along with what they had.
US F4Fs and FM2s served till the end of the war on US escort carriers.
@@cvr527 Attacking subs posed no great risk to Wildcats. Against Zeros they were very out-classed, even using various tactics the Americans developed to help them at least be in the fight between Wildcats and Zeros. Most aircraft no matter how obsolete were used through the end of the war including the F2A Buffalo.
Attacking subs posed a great danger to Wildcats because they could sink the carriers that carried them and did.
Regardless, Wildcats were not outclassed by A6Ms. Yes, Zeros could outperform wildcats in most respects, but Wildcats were much tougher aircraft.
All of the most decisive carrier battles were fought almost entirely with Wildcats. Indeed, by the end of the war Wildcats had a 4 or 5 to one kill ratio over Zeros.
The Hellcats and Corsairs fought mainly land-based aircraft.
F4F3s and FM2 Wildcats successfully fought enemy planes until the last day of the war.
The Buffalo was only used because it was all that was available at the time. The Buffalo was never used in the same way as the Wildcat and except in Finland never achieved even remotely close to the success that the Wildcat did.
@@DylansPen You mean you are not even close I defy you to provide a sound source for your misinformation.
@@cvr527 And I think that was a very good fit for them as they were not engaging, for the most part, the enemy's best fighters they were attacking subs or ships. The F4F though pretty obsolete at the beginning of the war did pretty well still.
Was sabotage a problem on American Factory floors??, never heard that before.
3.10...did you spot him?.......Huntz Hall of the 'Dead End Kids' and 'The Bowery Boys'; ( it's a film clip)
I have heard from somewhere that they took two of the fifties out to increase the ammo capacity. Obviously you don’t want to have to land every five mins ‘cos you’ve run out of ammo. Surprisingly so for a bespoke naval fighter to have that fault. The Fulmars had masses of ammo. That said I’d have had the fifties anyway over the 30 cals.
As I understand it. Two .50's were added in a redesign, this actually decreased performance and fewer rounds were loaded for each gun. They switched back to four .50's and more rounds per gun.
The earlier F4F-3 had for 0.50s, which they increased to six for -4 model, with fewer rounds per gun. That was unpopular, so they reverted back to the original four gun layout. Every Wildcat produced by Eastern Aircraft though came with the four gun layout (US designation FM-1 or FM-2). I’m not exactly sure how the FAA Martlet model designations line up with their US equivalent though.
It was, in fact, the RN that asked for six fifties. At the time the Martlet's main job was shooting down Condors and flying boats that were shadowing/attacking the convoys. These are large aircraft and required a lot of firepower to guarantee a kill.
@@WgCdrLuddite really? That’s interesting. The Fulmars had thirty cals but they had loads of ammo. They did suffer badly from defensive fire later as they had to close to point blank fir their 303s to damage the then retro fitted armour plated bombers.
@@dennisfox8673 ah good man! Thanks.
I think they lined up as you described, though. Great planes. Not as great as Fulmars but I’ve a big soft spot for Fulmars (they remind me of me: big, slow and strangely effective)
The best sports cars have roll up windows and manual unpowered steering too.
It would have been interesting if some Martlet’s saw action in the Battle of Britain.
I believe there were some very early examples around perhaps a bit after that time. But they were kept in Scotland for base defence only as they were not believed to be front-line-worthy (so armour for the pilot, no self-sealing fuel tanks).
Did these British flown Wildcat's ever tangle with German BF 109 Or the FW 190 ? Be nice to know the outcome if so .
Hiya. I believe they may have during Operation Pedestal, the convoy to save Malta. I've assembled more detail here:
www.armouredcarriers.com/grumman-f4f-martlet-variants
The Wildcat F4F-4 and Martlet II/IV weighed 7975/7750lbs, and were not light aircraft, by any means especially since they only had a maximum of 1200hp. In some cases the pilot accounts seem to be confusing the F4F with the F6F.
I think it's also their point of reference ... The Fairey Fulmar was quite heavy for 1940-41.
@@ArmouredCarriers True, but the Sea Hurricane 1B weighed ~7000lb and had ~1300hp with 12lb boost.
The RAF claimed responsibility for all aircraft. That's why the Royal Navy didn't have purpose built carrier aircraft. And my dad called cranking up the landing gear the Wildcat bounce.
The RN still saw aircraft as an aid to battleships, with the result that FAA planes were all slow and overweight, and all two or three seaters. Funny how the US carrier planes were all (except for the Corsair) very portly.
The tipping point that was radar had a major impact.
Before radar, if you wanted your aircraft to fly long distances over water, in bad weather or at night, you needed a dedicated navigator. This is what the Fulmars did while tracking Bismark.
A year or two later, single-seaters could radio back to their carrier for a radar-based approach vector.
Ah, so the groundloop thing wasn't just a CFS2 quirk? I think I wrecked more Wildcats landing at Henderson Field than I lost to the IJN in that old game.
The account of the engine sabotage was quite disturbing.
Angry Bumble Bee should have been the British appellation. Much better than Martlet.
American built and flown with English tenacity.
From gangly school boys… to wheezing old men with canes .
is that huntz hall the bowery boy at 3:10
What was the actual reason the Wright Cyclone had severe problems? Was it a civilian engine that was trying to perform beyond it’s design capabilities or a case of sabotage? Or something else? The sabotage idea sounds like some classic Navy scuttlebutt (I suspect just as common an occurrence even in the Royal Navy)
I don’t want to impugn the integrity of the British pilot that related that story. Because what the hell do I know?
Anyway great video!
Don't forget the Wright Cyclone also the engine used in the B-17. In the 1930's there really wasn't much to differentiate between civilian and military engines.
Something I've never seen before--a photo of a Wildcat with invasion stripes. Comments?
They were on escort carriers about that time, operating mostly in the North Atlantic.
It's my understanding that prewar Japanese and British were the ones that really saw the potential of aircraft carriers so it still surprises me they didn't have their own purpose built fighter.
Yeah. A tough one. It was a tough time. The second half of the 1930s saw an extraordinary acceleration in aircraft technology. The Skua was simply left behind even as it was being built. This was recognised, which is why the Fairey Fulmar emergency program was adopted.
Now there were three other fighters "in the works": An authentic Seafire (not the adaptation that entered service), the Firefly and the Firebrand. The outbreak of war, the bombing of London and Coventry, the Battle of Britain etc seriously delayed these programs. And their engine was cancelled to focus efforts on the Merlin/Griffin/Centaurus.
That's the price the UK paid for being on the front line from 1939.
@@ArmouredCarriers makes sense, thanks for the reply.
"There is a controversy between those who say that the Admiralty did not get what it wanted for the Fleet Air Arm and those who say that the Admiralty was not very clever at explaining what exactly it 796 was that it wanted. I noticed quite recently that Air Marshal Dowding has gone on record as saying that the Admiralty got precisely the types which it specified and demanded. Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of this controversy there is certainly no doubt whatever about it that war found the Fleet Air Arm equipped with extremely bad aircraft."
api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1943/jan/27/fleet-air-arm
@@ArmouredCarriers Griffon I think
They insisted on 2 seat fighters with a separate navigator!
7:40 wrong direction of rotation……prop angle opposite direction ?
ugh the landing gear on that plane... I feel like I might tip over just looking at it.
It's crazy seeing the US markings on those Seafires and Albacores. But sabotage of the engines? Really? Has that been verified?
Not that I've seen. But that was the perspective of this pilot. To me that's equally fascinating. Cotton waste could easily be a symptom of a desperate rush to ramp-up production for wartime ... or explained away as such!
(The upshot of that story, which I didn't have space to include, was that four out of the remaining five aircraft were written off attempting to land at night. The delay to check on him caused them to arrive at their destination late)
@@ArmouredCarriers FOD is a constant concern for aerospace manufacturing. I worked in the rocket engine business. A piece of cotton cloth used in the assembly process was not removed at the proper step and left in the propellant feed system of a Peacekeeper ICBM 4th stage. The stage provided attitude control and axial thrust required to deploy re-entry vehicles. That missile was used in a test flight and properly sent off 5 RVs (IRC) but failed for the rest when the propellant feed system clogged. It caused a big upheaval at the assembly plant and retraining to make sure that never happened again.
@@Tony-om5kr Eeeek. Scary!
English passport?
1 second ago
There were plenty of people in America of predominantly German and Italian origination who resented supplying the British with american aircraft Charles Lindenburg had plenty of supporters.The Brewster Factory manufactured Corsair Fighters these were very poorly manufactured sabotage was rife this was because they had a mainly Italian workforce who were resentful of how things had turned out.... The Brewster Corsairs party piece amongst many other ingeniously contrived challenges was that the wings could fall off at any time. Even when being used for training pilots the Brewster Corsairs had built up a fearfully bad reputation...
The american pilots in the know refused to fly them and they were rather cynically passed off to the British as a Lend lease donation to their Allies. After loosing a few pilots and then finding and fixing the faults we found the Fleet Air Arm used these basically superb rebuilt aircraft in the Fleet Air Arm on our carriers in the Atlantic Arctic Mediterranean Indian and Pacific war zone's with some considerable success.... As an aside....Charles Lindenburg proved to be a great asset during the war he went out to the Pacific and sorted out the severely miscalibrated carburation problems of the P38 the P40 the lockheed lightning and all the radial engined front line fighters including the P47 including the Corsair and bombers the Americans used in all theatre's.from B17 to B29...a clever guy...
Satellite factories always changed the manufacturing processes in some smart way that screwed everything up. The U.S. factories trying to make 20 mm Hispano cannon simply refused to make them the way the Brits did, they never sorted their jamming out before the war was over. The US Navy had to use greased ammo in their Curtiss SB2C Helldivers.
Bring in the 'mighty' Albacore...
A plane replaced by the plane it was supposed to replace.... allegedly:)
Warmer over the Atlantic winter?
@@geordiedog1749 swordfish pilots absolutely loathed the albacore for carrier ops. my dad was one. it was ok for shore based ops tho.
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 it won't keep you warm when you crash it over the side cos it handles like a pig, or the engine conks out in the middle of nowhere. horrible aircraft.
@@papalegba6759 I heard that too. I would have thought the simple inclusion of a canopy would have endeared them to the ‘Applecore’ but apparently’no’. A hardy bunch these guys. But then flying a plane like that in to battle in the first place suggests that they were secretly all part of a death cult. Maybe ‘Stringbag’ was just referring to the large container required to carry the enormous balls of the Swordfish crews?
The Skua seemed to be a pretty good dive bomber why wasn't it kept in service for that role?
The Swordfish and the various fighters could do the same job.
It was still exceedingly under-powered. And early-war Royal Navy doctrine place much greater emphasis on torpedo attack anyway.
The idea was spot on but the implementation was derisory. The big basic problem was the lack of powerful 1000hp plus supercharged radial engines because the R.A.F.bombers got the best Bristol engines . The Admiralty/F.A.A. wasn't even in the running for the castoffs..
Did not the skua take out the German light cruiser Leipzig during the Norwegian campaign?
Already approaching obsolescence at the beginning of the war and its replacement, the Fulmar was just entering service. Why Blackburn decided to base the Roc turret fighter on it was just a bad idea.
At 8:12 it seems an American marked Wildcat has eight guns in the wings? Anyone know about this?
I was aware of some having six. But not eight ...
It looks like it, doesn’t it. They had a flaw of low ammo capacity so I can’t imagine how they have any room for ammo if there were 8 instead of four in each wing. Maybe a prototype with thirty cals instead?
@@geordiedog1749 maybe .303 or 30-06. Strange
@@guaporeturns9472 I think thirty aught six as they’re US? The .303 (7.7mm) was a very British thing.
@@geordiedog1749 yes true. I have a rifle in each caliber.
Unfortunate none of these pilot recollections include any remarks on how the Wildcat fared against opposing fighters.
The main operation where the RN encountered fighter opposition while using the Wildcat/Martlet was the Pedestal Convoy (the Malta supply run).
I can't remember off the top of my head if I had a Martlet' pilot's account in my Memories of War videos on that one ...
Too late , jets became the trend !