Grumman F4F Wildcat

The Grumman F4F Wildcat is an American carrier-based fighter aircraft that entered service in 1940 with the United States Navy and the British Royal Navy. The British made the first use of the type in combat, initially as a base-defense fighter; later they operated it from escort carriers in the North Atlantic, and later still from fleet carriers, under the name Martlet. By the time of Pearl Harbor the Wildcat was the best fighter available to the United States Navy and Marine Corps, and remained so until mid-1943. The disappointing Brewster F2A Buffalo remained in limited front-line and second-line service through much of 1942, but was withdrawn as soon as enough Wildcats became available.

In the Pacific Wildcats found themselves matched against various marks of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. US Navy pilots were reasonably satisfied with the F4F-3 model of the Wildcat, with which they fought through May 1942 and the Battle of the Coral Sea, but were initially much less satisfied with the "improved" F4F-4, which first engaged the Zero at Midway. This mark suffered from increased weight, resulting mainly from the addition of folding wings and a heavier gun battery, without any increase in engine power; this left the F4F-4 with a more sluggish performance than its predecessor. Improved tactics, based on close mutual support by fighters operating as a unit, helped reduce the consequences of reduced performance, and later models (which entered service after the type had been withdrawn from front-line service) were given reduced gun batteries and upgraded engines, giving them better performance in their reduced roles. In the final tally Wildcat pilots claimed an air combat kill-to-loss ratio of 5.9:1 for 1942 and 6.9:1 for the war as a whole.

In the spring of 1942 lessons learned from early Wildcat combat operations were applied, at the last minute, to prototypes of Grumman's vastly superior F6F Hellcat, the design of which already owed a great deal to the Wildcat. While the Wildcat had better range and maneuverability at low speed, the Hellcat, with c. 50 percent greater power available, could easily outperform the Zero, and superseded the Wildcat in front-line service in 1943-44.

From mid-1942 onward production of the Wildcat was subcontracted to a new division of General Motors, the Eastern Aircraft Division, which was established specifically to produce other firms' aircraft, and which ultimately did produce more than three-quarters of all the Wildcats and Avengers that were built.