| AJ Press |
| F6F Hellcat, Aircraft Monograph #20 |
| by Adam Jarski and Waldemar Pajolosz |
| Reviewed By Art Silen, IPMS# 1708 |
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MSRP: $50 AJ Press, 2006, 296 pages, available from AirConnection, www.airconnection.on.ca . AJ Press, in Poland, has now produced two excellent books on the premier U.S. Navy's fighter aircraft in World War II, the F4U Corsair, and now the F6F Hellcat. The Corsair book appeared about fifteen months ago, and in my review, published on the IPMS-USA website (click here), I gave it my enthusiastic endorsement. This volume follows the same general format used to describe the Corsair, a section each on historical development, camouflage and markings, combat operations, and technical data drawn from official erection and maintenance manuals describing how various components and systems worked. Interestingly enough, although the Hellcat was technically less sophisticated than the Corsair, there appears to be more information included, as the book is some thirty-two pages longer, and the color photographs are superior. Overall, the Hellcat book is excellent, but there are problems that I could not overlook, principally in the scale drawings. Aviation historians may also have concerns about the way in which the authors describe the Hellcat's early development, although that history is not well delineated by any of the authors whose works I have consulted in preparing this review. The section describing the Hellcat's development spans thirty-five pages, and it was here that I first noticed difficulties in the narrative. Although the book is produced by a Polish publisher, the language is fluent English; the problems lie more in the organization of the timeline during which the events the authors describe occurred. Aircraft, as indeed much of the equipment that the military uses, are upgraded and refined as new tasks are identified and performance requirements increase. Some aircraft, among them the Corsair, had long service lives, and in which existing and newly manufactured examples were continuously upgraded to match or overcome the performance of potential competitors or opponents in combat. In 1938, the Grumman Aircraft Corporation, headed by Leroy R. Grumman, an accomplished former naval aviator turned businessman, fielded its first monoplane fighter, the F4F-1 Wildcat. A follow-on project, the proposed F4F-2, was shelved after losing a design competition with Brewster Aeronautical Corporation's F2A-1 Buffalo. Grumman revamped the aborted project and designed the F4F-3, powered by a 1,200 hp Pratt & Whitney R 1830 Twin Wasp engine with a single speed, two-stage supercharger. The -3 was accepted by the Navy and began squadron service in December, 1940. At the same time it was recognized that the Wildcat, in its then-current configuration, had limited potential for achieving improvement in speed, climb, armor protection, and firepower. The U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics had been anticipating the debut of the Vought F4U Corsair, powered by the new Pratt & Whitney R 2800 engine, and exceeding 400 miles-per-hour in level flight, to be the Wildcat's successor. However, the Corsair's development, as well as the new engine, had been protracted, and a landing accident seriously damaged the prototype XF4U-1 delaying flight trials until late in the summer of 1940. The Corsair's continuing problems, most particularly in controlling the aircraft when landing, gave naval officials cause for concern. As a hedge against further protracted delays in getting the Corsair into squadron service, the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics approached the Grumman Aircraft Corporation with a request that Grumman redesign the Wildcat to accommodate a larger engine, and make improvements in the Wildcat's range endurance, firepower, and armor protection. The bureau was proposing that Grumman use the Wright R-2600 Cyclone, rated at 1,700 horsepower, as the basis for the requested upgrade. As design studies proceeded, it became apparent to Roy Grumman and his design staff that the Wildcat was too small an aircraft to readily accommodate the changes the Navy wanted. He also realized that the Wildcat was approaching technical obsolescence and even if the Cyclone engine could be successfully integrated into the Wildcat's small airframe, that would add only six to twelve months to its usefulness as a first-line fighter. In the rapid pace of a wartime environment, changes and improvements were occurring daily as the United States strove to overcome the advantages that German and Japanese aircraft enjoyed because of their long lead development times. It must have borne heavily on naval planner's minds how Western European air arms had been summarily defeated by the Luftwaffe within the space of a few short weeks; and reports from China indicated that Japan now had first-rate aircraft in its inventory. Technical sufficiency to successfully oppose potential opponents had to be a primary consideration, as inventories of all American aircraft types were low, and newly-built aircraft had first to survive in combat if they were ever to prevail over the course of the war. Grumman essentially told the bureau's procurement officials that the time and effort needed to upgrade the Wildcat would be better spent in designing an entirely new aircraft; and in fact such was the case. Grumman's promise of a rapid turn-around time was one of the deciding factors in the Navy's decision to proceed with the Hellcat; and true to his word, the Grumman Aircraft Corporation had a full-scale mock-up available for Navy inspectors in January, 1941, which the Navy approved on the 23rd of that month. The following month saw the finalization of written design specifications for the Hellcat, and on June 30, 1941, a formal development contract was entered into. Roy Grumman had hoped that the Navy would allow him to use Pratt & Whitney's new R 2800 engine for his new design, rather than the Wright R 2600 Cyclone, which the Bureau of Aeronautics had specified. Navy officials demurred, citing Vought's expected resolution of the Corsair's development problems; but as time wore on the Bureau of Aeronautics' persistent refusal to change its position on the matter softened as the debut of the Corsair into operational service receded further into the future. A compromise was reached and Grumman was permitted to build the second of the two prototypes on order to accommodate the Pratt & Whitney engine. Grumman's prescience and persistence paid off as soon as the first Hellcat became airborne on June 26, 1942, when Grumman's test pilot, Bob Hall, reported that the airplane was decidedly underpowered. A month later, the second prototype flew its maiden flight with the R 2800, and the result, as they say, was history. Over the next year, as fledgling pilots trained, the Hellcat underwent a program of detail refinements to prepare it for squadron service and ultimately combat, which first occurred in a sweep over Marcus Island on August 31, 1943. Beyond that, the design underwent remarkably few changes over its wartime service life, even as its mission envelope increased, a tribute to Leroy Grumman and his design team's foresight and design capabilities. Whereas the Corsair went through seven major design changes (and had a much longer service life) the Hellcat had but two; but the Hellcat was there when it was needed, and in combat it racked up a 19 to 1 kill ration that has never been equaled. Following the historical development narrative are fourteen pages of scale drawings, mostly 1:72, with full plan and profile views in 1:48 scale. Additionally in 1:48 scale are detailed cutaway drawings showing major construction and equipment locations. The drawings are well-done and without superfluous detail, such as rivet lines; but there is something off-putting about them that has to do with the shape of the engine cowl. It is too tapered for the bulky radial engine it shrouds, and is immediately noticeable. These drawings may well have been inspired by similar (and far more detailed) drawings done by Arthur L. Bentley in 1982, first published in Scale Models Warplane Special (MAP, Ltd, 1982), and recently reprinted in the October, 2005, issue of Scale Aviation Modeller International (Vol. 11, Issue 10, pages 950-951). For comparison, one might compare them with drawings included in Barrett Tillman's histories of the Hellcat: Hellcat: The F6F in World War II (Naval Institute Press, 1979), page 22; Hellcat Aces of World War 2 (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces #10, Osprey Publishing Company, 1996). Most other sources, including the photographs in this book, in fact show that the curves are much more sharply rounded than the draftsman's interpretation, but readers may want to judge for themselves on this point. Next follows is a section on Hellcat camouflage and markings for Americans, British, and Commonwealth aircraft. This section includes clear, detailed and well-chosen photographs. Toward the rear of the book is a 56-page collection of well-done, detailed color profiles in 1:48, and a compilation of wing and tail carrier air group markings in 1:72 and 1:96 scale. There are also clear and well-chosen color photographs depicting carrier operations. There is also a cut-away drawing of the Hellcat done in full color. The section covering operational service encompasses 145 pages. Many of the photographs have not been published previously, and those photographs that have been published previously are still worthy of mention because of the excellent quality of paper stock used. The historical narrative is well-written, and predominantly in the British idiom, following the Hellcat's debut into combat in the summer of 1943 until the end of the Pacific War in August, 1945, with a detour describing operations by the Fleet Air Arm against German forces in Norway, and in particular, the battleship TIRPITZ, and the Allied landings in Southern France (Operation Anvil) in August, 1944, when Hellcats flown by American and British pilots flew in support of the landing and subsequent ground operations. There is also discussion of Hellcat operations aboard British aircraft carriers in Southeast Asian waters, and a separate section on Hellcat nightfighters, the F6F-3E and -5N. Descriptions of combat operations are well-drawn and convey a clear sense of what it must have been like to challenge a tenacious Japanese or German enemy. It might also be fair to say that describing combat operations the interest and breadth of the authors' narrative demonstrates a clear interest and command of the subject matter that their description of the Hellcat's technical development did not necessarily reflect. The historical narrative concludes with a short coda describing postwar Hellcat use, and a summing up of the type's effectiveness during the war. Finally, there is a technical section containing photographs and graphical materials drawn from Hellcat erection and maintenance manual. The cockpit photographs are excellent and identify instruments and equipment, including radar equipment where installed. Other materials include: As aircraft design histories go, F6F Hellcat ranks with the best, and it is at least the equal to its stable-mate, F4U Corsair, in scope and content. The problems I mention concerning the development narrative and drawing accuracy are things that experts and academic historians might argue about, but these fade when compared with the book's positive virtues. Over the past 45 years a number of Hellcat histories have been written, many of them excellent, but none with the breadth and depth of content and detail that this one has. Most have been of relatively short (magazine article-length) in length, or as part of compilations (i.e., William Green and Gordon Swanborough, U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Fighters (World War 2 Fact Files, Arco Publishing Company, 1977). With a possible exception of William Green's various works, most histories (and this would apply to aviation histories generally) focus heavily on photographs, drawings, and other graphical materials. None of this is bad, but in several cases I encountered in preparing this review, the research and scholarship is haphazard, and, for reasons I have yet to fully comprehend, British publications appear to have the edge in factual accuracy, reliability, and readability; and I certainly would count this book to be among them. Regrettably, I have not found a book that addresses the subject of aircraft design development as a multi-faceted continuum in which the state of the art developed in dialogues between government procurement officials and aircraft manufacturers. I have several volumes in my collection, chiefly in the Putnam Aeronautical Series that discuss these events from a British perspective, but, with the possible exception of two 1960's era Harborough titles, United States Army and Air Force Fighters, 1916-1961 (Harleyford Publications, Ltd, 1961), and United States Navy and Marine Corps Fighters, 1918-1962 (Harleyford Publications, Ltd, published in the United States by Aero Publishers, 1962,), little here in the United States that documents aircraft design philosophy as it evolved during the thirty year period of world conflict that ended around 1960, when ballistic missiles began to bear the principal burden of strategic defense. It could well be that such materials exist, but it has not been for lack of interest that I have not found them. In the case of the Hellcat, even as the authors' delineation of events that led to the Navy's decision to develop the Hellcat as a new design might have been more clearly written, and without adding appreciably to the text, neither have any of the other historians and aviation writers I mention done so. The closest I found to what I was looking for was Green and Swanborough's short book on American naval aircraft cited above, and there I had to skip back and forth within the book to review the period as a single time line, as development of the Wildcat, Hellcat, and Corsair all occurred within the same three to four year period. Even then, I had to infer the progress of events and the reasons as to why decisions were made, or to fill in the gaps from other histories. The Hellcat was a direct consequence of the Corsair's gestation difficulties and the United States Navy's concern that the Wildcat would have insufficient capability to counter aeronautical developments by America's potential enemies, Germany and Japan. Those concerns proved to be well-founded, as Wildcat-equipped Navy and Marine Corps pilots fought a bitter, costly eighteen-month war on unequal terms against the Japanese on Guadalcanal and elsewhere until the Hellcat and Corsair arrived in mid-1943. Amateur historians such as I are often frustrated because we have little or no access to original materials and must rely on professional writers and historians to make the case with factual data obtained from diverse places. Fortuitously, Jarski and Pajolosz come further than most in giving the details of a marvelous historical drama. They also offer a comprehensive bibliography of earlier works they consulted in bringing the Hellcat's story to life. My final word would be, if you could have only one book on the Hellcat, buy this one. |
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