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Hey guys , my family flew the Grumman goose sea planes to Catalina island early 1960’s and they had the same system , I was just a kid and asked my Dad what the pilots was doing , he said “ raising the landing gear !
The FM2 nee F4F was derived from the F3F, a biplane. It's impractical to fold gear into the lower wing of a biplane. So when Grumman got the word that the F4F had to be a monoplane it went to a single wing design but retained the out-of-date gear system.
...Monogram had a 1/32 (or 1/48) kit of the F3 that had the retractable gear as you turned the prop...the good old days of great kits that didn't require a mortgage to buy...
When I got to fly an FM-2 many years ago, I was warned to never let the gear free-fall since you could have a chain come off a sprocket and jam the gear halfway.
I saw a wildcat fighter in the 90s at the Oklahoma City airshow, before Tom Jones tragically died, and the show stopped. It was with the "commemorative air force", down in Texas.
That is maybe so, as the FAA acquired ex Aeronavale F4F,s after Frances Capitulation in June 1940, and a god send to the Atlantic Convoys when the FAA desperately needed decent carrier fighters. In the 21st century, peaceful activity of display flying, the tedious act of winding up the F4F,s undercarriage is exhausting. For example the Shuttleworth Trust,s Jewel in the crown the DH 88 Comet Racer G-ACSS Grosvenor House had its undercarriage converted to electric actuation using a canopy motor off a Blackburn Buccaneer Attack Bomber.
read once where early on in the war they'd take off then the hand crank was being worked and how they always wobbled as they flew away....now we know why. nice post.
I doubt those airplanes had too many landing gear system failures! Good and reliable, as long as your not being shot at whilst trying to take off, then this probably beats the added weight and complexity of an electric or hydraulic gear!
Note that the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero and Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa both had hydraulic landing gear, despite being designed to save the maximum possible amount of weight (no self sealing fuel tanks or armour).
Why wouldn't the manufacturer have fitted servo motor/ gearbox ,seems crazy flying a plane a plane trying to wind the gear up, I can understand for an emergency lowering the gear manually.
In theory yeah, but an upside down aircraft right after takeoff is almost always a bad idea, unless you fly for the blue angels or something. Would be fun to see tho.
Not all engines like being upside down for more than a few seconds. Fuel or oil supply could be affected. I have no idea how the F4F deals with that. Also, like someone else already said, probably not a great idea to that sort of stuff whilst at low airspeed and with possible battle damage (at landing).
@@joeblowe3180 thanks for the info, I didn't know that but regarding the Wildcats I understood that you somehow needed three or four hands to crank up or down the wheels..
You’d think with 1350hp of American Thunder on the front of that plane that there’d be enough spare for undercarriage winding. The kids flying those planes had their hands full with takeoff and landing and didn’t need pointless lazy design like this.
Motor would only replace the crank and one chain, maybe, but now it needs electrical power, a fuse or circuit breaker, and that's more to break and maintain. Sometimes simple is good, the pilot only had to crank twice per flight, and he wasn't cranking during combat.
When you think that even the Japanese fighters, that put lightness above all, had powered landing gear operation, this decision by Grumman was inexcusable. I bet the thing pilots transitioning from the F4F to the F6F liked the most, wasn't the 2000 HP engine, but a landing gear that gets up and down with the flip of a switch.
@@joeblowe3180 pilots did not “love” the hand crank landing gear. Not only was it tedious, it could potentially injure a pilot if their hand slipped off the crank handle, and there were other issues too. “A common complaint from pilots was the manual hand-cranked retracting landing gear, which required 30 cranks. One slip could result in a serious wrist injury.” “Several cases of stripped gears have occurred after the hand crank tore out of the pilot’s hand and the wheels “ran away.” Excerpt from an article from the 1 Oct 1945 issue of Naval Aviation News: “The FM has its own unique causes of numerous wheels-up landings.… A point is reached in turning the crank handle at which it becomes difficult to rotate the handle. But don’t stop there because hardened grease and grit may be causing the crank to stick.” There were also cases where pilots were interrupted for various reasons while cranking and didn’t remember to crank the gear all the way down, resulting in gear up landings.
