The new fighter that answered the Navy pilots’ demand for more speed and more power was the Grumman F6F Hellcat. Much larger than its baby brother the Wildcat, the Hellcat was powered with an eighteen-cylinder Pratt & Whitney radial engine. The big radial developed over 2,000 horsepower and put the Hellcat in the 400-mile-an-hour class. It proved to be one of the most maneuverable fighters in the world and could climb like a skyrocket. The cockpit housed atop the big fuselage at its highest point gave pilots excellent visibility to train the Hellcat’s six .50-caliber guns on the enemy.
The Hellcat has plenty of protective armor for its pilot. It has rubber gasoline tanks encased in canvas hammocks giving them great flexibility in resisting the penetration of bullets and shell fragments. The Hellcat handles beautifully at all altitudes. At high altitudes it could more than outfight any plane that the Japs sent up. It is also a deadly weapon when used in low-altitude strafing attacks against airfields and shipping. The Hellcat has now replaced the Wildcat as the standard fighter based on our aircraft carriers. Much of our success in driving the Japs out of the air over the Pacific is due to the Hellcat. These powerful fighters, based on the carriers of Admiral Halsey’s famous Task Force 58, carried their devastating attacks to the Japs’ homeland.
Although dive-bombing was originated by Navy airmen it was a number of years before an airplane was built that was rugged enough to stand up under the shock of repeated dives. The first airplane built specifically for dive-bombing was a Curtiss F8C Helldiver, built in 1929. This original dive-bomber was a biplane. The series continued until 1935 when Curtiss introduced the SBC type of dive-bomber. This was also a biplane with wire bracing. The streamlining in the SBC was much improved and it was equipped with a retractable landing gear. The SBC was also called the Helldiver. While the SBC series marked advance in dive-bomber performance, the biplane wings and wire bracing created a drag which held down its diving speed. In 1939 the Curtiss Company began to work on a new dive-bomber design.
In the meantime Douglas had brought out the all-metal, low-wing SBD Dauntless dive-bomber. This was a fast, clean airplane equipped with flaps for diving. The flaps, attached to the trailing edge of the wing, could be dropped down to act as brakes. The flaps created a resistance which cut the speed of the plane at the will of the pilot. Powered with a 1,000-horsepower radial engine, the SBD had a speed of about 200 miles per hour. It carried a 1,000-pound bomb under its fuselage which, when released by the pilot, was swung clear of the plane by a yokelike gear. The SBD usually started its dive at an altitude of 10,000 feet. From that height the plane could pick up a speed of from 450 to 500 miles per hour. The best speed for dive-bombing is about 275 miles per hour, and the flaps on the SBD enabled the pilot to control his speed as he dived on his target.
At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the SBD was the standard dive-bomber based on our carriers. From the very start it was a star performer in our war in the Pacific. In the first years of the struggle SBD’s destroyed more enemy planes, ships, and property than did all our other air and surface weapons combined. SBD’s were in the forefront in our war in the Pacific. But a giant new dive-bomber suddenly appeared over Rabaul, New Guinea, in the fall of 1944, the deadliest bomber which had yet dived on the Japs. Another Helldiver was in action.
