Evolution of the Grumman F4F Wildcat - US Variants 

The Wildcat and P40 Warhawk were the planes that were there and done it during the dark days of WW2. If the USA didn't have these planes when the war started we would be screwed. Sure the later fighting planes get all the attention but these early fighters saved our butts.

When one steps back and looks at the Naval war in the Pacific. The F4F was the lead fighter type in all pivotal battels and lead to the decimation of the flower of the Japanese naval pilots long before either the F4U Corsair or the F6F Hellcat were in theater use. It was the Wildcats that held the naval line and pushed back the Japanese at sea. Yes the F4U and F6F have higher totals, but this was against a vastly inferior pilot from what was faced before, and neither of which was compatible with the Escort type carriers which far out numbered the Fleet types.

Great job, the Wildcat, P40 & Hurricane were the 3 fighters that saved the allies bacon, the only competent truly mass produced fighters at the start of the war, not show horses, work horses

The Wilcat was ideal for the small escort carriers, and without them the outcome of the war could have been different

While the Wildcat couldn't outperform the Zero in climb or turn ability, and while it was slower, it packed a hell of a punch and could take an awful lot of punishment--due to its solid construction and armor--compared to the Zero. It took a lot of bullets to down a Wildcat. It took very few for a Wildcat to blow a Zero out of the sky.

A reason why the FM-2 became popular was the fact it flew slow enough to operate off smaller US Navy CVE's and Merchant Aircraft Carriers (MAC ships). The FM-2 proved vital in sinking U-Boats in the Atlantic and to provide additional air cover for the "island hopping" campaign in the Pacific.

Very informative, can you do a more in depth look at how they were used on escort carriers after the introduction of the F6F Hellcat after it took over the main fighter role

Nice video! I'm really looking foward to seeing more videos from your channel!

comprehensive -well done-the lightweight decks of the escort carriers kept it in production

I liked your delivery. Good pace. I enjoyed the content. Keep it up.

Keep up the good work. Well presented material with good photographs, this channel will get a large following with quality videos like this.

Long range Wildcat? Incredible.

very good presentation. Thank You! and yes I will love to see more aircraft documentaries in your skillful style. This video is akin to the five minute guide to warships series, excellent quality!

Excellently done. Simply but accurately explained history.

Wow. Superb thorough scholarship. The result: FASCINATING presentation about a wonderful little fighter!!!

Nice job! Your research is commendable!

This little plane is one of my favorites, but do you happen to know how many air frames still survive and how many are airworthy? Love the video!!!

A solid presentation about a solid plane. Thx!

Thank you for posting!

Excellent video! I would live to see a follow up an variants used by other nations.

Nicely done. Thanks.

Great video I think along this thought process if you wanna keep making videos. The p-40 or maybe the 109 would be great planes since they have so much to talk about

Thanks algo for the recommendation! New sub here.

Thanks--that was interesting. I knew what a crucial role the F4F filled during 1942, and I'm also familiar with its use by the Brits (as the Martlet, if I remember right, as a convoy escort fighter)--but I didn't know its earlier history, or the many different variants that were experimented with (especially an ultra-long-range reconnaissance version!). [It sort of reminds me of the countless different variants of the Wildcat's land-based contemporary, the Curtiss P-40, which in its basic manifestations was a tough, durable, decently armed and well-armored plane that couldn't quite match the performance of its rivals but managed to hold its own anyway.]

Hey hi. I guess you've moved on to other things. I subscribed anyway. Your video was very informative and despite being an avid WW2 fan I learned a few things here about the Wildcat. I hope you get back to making the videos, you done good here.

Great video

A nice interesting documentary on the Wildcat. What gets me is the pilots saying all they needed was 4 - 50cal’s to get the job done!

Nicely done.Fleet Air Arm versions ?

Excellent. Thank you.

Outstanding video! I grew up with the myth of early US fighter designs being grossly inferior to the Zero. When you look at raw performance numbers, they aren't that far apart.

A good video of the f4f wildcat and could you do a foreign version plus 2 videos about USN battles an foreign battles with this aircraft

Need an episode of royal navy/and others wildcat, the martlet

Nice job.

I was surprised to find out on the USN's history site that the Wildcat finished the war with a 6.9 -1 kill ratio.

well done video.

Another complaint about the extra two guns on the -4 was that, being further out in the wing, roll rate was noticeably slowed.

Great Video: Which variant was prevalent at the battle of Midway? Also I read somewhere that there was an F6-F on Midway that day but no one had been checked out in it so it didn't participate in the Battle and was apparently destroyed on the ground. Can you verify this for me? Great Video would love to learn of all the escort carrier duties that it performed: maybe some war time camera video of shooting up submarines and ground attacks and its other duties.

An episode on the P-39 and the P-400 (“a P-39 with Zero on its’ tail”) would be appreciated. My father commanded an LST off New Guinea and said he “always felt better when I saw the Airacobras”)

Always had a soft spot for the chubby little underdog.

Great program!!!!! If I could own a WW2 fighter it would be a WILDCAT!!!

hi do you think you could do one about wildcats that serve in the fleet air arm i think that would be interesting

I just received my dad's Navy flight logbook from 1945. There is one entry in it that states he flew and F4F-1 from San Diego to Big Springs TX. This is a straight line distance of about a thousand miles. No stops between were listed, and besides, the F4F-1 was never built. Most F4Fs I believe had less than a 1000 mile range. I wonder if the plane he flew was an F4F-7 and the 7 came out looking like a 1? No idea where these planes were deployed in the US or scrapped?

The 2,000 HP double wasp was being developed at the same time as the F4F. It seems to me that they could have beefed up the frame and placed this engine on the Wildcat. It was about the same size as the later F8F Bearcat.

When is your next video?

Thank you so much for your previous reply. I have another question: P-38s were sent to kill Yamamoto. Lindbergh showed/taught a squadron group how to substansually extend the range of the P-38 via utilizing a designed in engine feature. Did Lindbergh teach this before the attack that killed Yamamoto? Should Lindbergh be accredited for making the attack possible? Been Curious!

Please do a piece on the foreign versions.

I would say that there's the FM-3 missing, but still GJ

These planes were modified in the field to carry a 500 pound bomb under the belly. Twelve such planes along with five Buffalo Brewster's and two Kingfishers stopped fourteen barges of troops and two supply ships from arriving at New Guinea.

Favorite Plane!!

Stand for the national anthem. Watch Sam Morrison Band "I will always stand" on RU-vid.

she could take a beating that's for sure! even in war thunder, it is a very resilient fighter.

Foreign variants please!

I love the WWII aircraft.

Its still a bucket!!!!! a jalopy!!!! The flying equivalent of a cobra II mustang

th F4 was faster than the first mitsubishi A6M

Subscriber 243

Slap a Wright R-2600 under the hood & clear the deck!

The F4f Wildcat was a tough fighter but was outmatched by the Japanese Zero. The American pilots had to develop the Thach weave maneuver to survive against the more agile and maneuverable Zero. The Wildcat got the United States through the Coral Sea and Midway battles I think the Wildcat performed pretty mediocre to poor in the Solomons. Once the Wildcat got into a turning battle with the Zero it often became a statistic. Dive and zoom tactics worked for the Wildcat but at some point a fighter plane has to turn with the enemy to shoot it down. The United States took heavy losses in shipping with 24 major warships lost including two carriers at the various Guadalcanal battles with the same losses as the Japanese. The United States should NOT have lost all those warships had we had a better fighter plane. Granted the Japanese were many times better than the US Navy at night fighting even when the Americans had primitive radar. The high kill ratios you read about the Wildcat in the Solomons are for ALL types of Japanese aircraft bombers, dive bombers, transports and fighters.At least the Wildcat was strong enough to take all of the Zero's machine gun bullets once the Zero pilot ran out of 20mm ammunition. But if the Zero fighter had 20mm ammo left then the Wildcat got splashed into the ocean. American pilots were brave because you had to be flying an obsolete Wildcat. The United States didn't start winning the air war in the Pacific until the wide scale deployment of the Hellcat in mid-1943. The Wildcat went into production with General Motors because it was a good jeep carrier fighter. The Wildcat was just an old fighter in 1942/43 with no more design capacity for a large more powerful engine. General MacArthur's big leap frogging campaign towards the Philippines didn't pick up steam until Admiral Nimitz's Navy carriers got the Hellcat. The Great Marianas Turkey shoot and the battle of Leyte Gulf were the turning points of the Pacific war. The earlier Solomons and New Guinea campaigns were nothing but a slow moving human sausage grinder battle of attrition on air, land and sea. The Hellcat won the war in the Pacific with help from the P-38 Lightining and Corsair to move the bomber line forward to smash Japanese cities with the capture of Saipan and Tinian/Guam. The fleet submarines of the US Navy also sunk 5.5 MILLION TONS of Japanese Merchant shipping and warships. The best praise you can give the Wildcat was it held the line in the early 1942/43 battles keeping the United States from being completely defeated in the Pacific until the Hellcat came off of the assemby lines. It would have taken the United States until 1948 to defeat the Japanese without the Hellcat fighter plane.

Too bad you are not speaking loud enough for this older man to hear you. It' too tedious to continually try to listen to you. sorry. t

I'm building a scale model of the F4F-4 and this video is indispensable to my research. Thanks, looking forward to more aircraft history