Flying the Hellcat
Piloting a Hellcat was similar to piloting a Wildcat, which was used in combat, making it easier for new pilots to check out.
Entrance to the cockpit is very easy. After you take the pilot’s seat, you’ll find a very large and well-ordered place to work. The view over the nose is excellent compared with those of Mustangs, Spitfires and Warhawks; they had forward-vision blind spots caused by their long noses that rise in front. The Hellcat pilot could see 100 yards down the runway directly ahead of the propeller. The cockpit’s interior was well laid out because Grumman cockpit engineer Bruce Smith had designed all of the preceding Grumman fighters’ cockpits. He was, therefore, well acquainted with the requirements of Navy and Grumman test pilots.
The Hellcat’s engine started exactly the same way as the Wildcat’s did. With the standard Navy earphone-equipped helmet, the engine-exhaust noise was tolerable even during carrier-required canopy-open takeoffs and landings.
Taxiing was effortless and didn’t require any “S” turning as all other fighters of the time did. The Hellcat’s strong wheel-braking capability was a heartwarming improvement over the Wildcat’s fading brakes. With the trim tabs properly set and the tailwheel locked, the takeoff checklist could be completed quite rapidly.
Directional control with takeoff power required little effort even if you forgot the nose-right rudder trim-tab setting because the Hellcat responded to rudder corrections shortly after the takeoff had started. This was not the case with the Wildcat’s narrow-track landing gear. In the Wildcat, if the right rudder-trim setting was forgotten, the plane would depart off the runway’s left side even with an all-too-late full right-rudder application.
With full flap deflection and full power (2,700rpm and 52 inches of manifold pressure), gross-weight Hellcat takeoffs could be made in 600 feet in calm wind and in 200 feet with 25mph wind over the carrier deck. Landing-gear retraction produced no trim change, and flap retraction required only a small elevator trim-tab wheel motion to attain best climb speed of 120mph. The great external visibility from the cockpit, the intuitive feeling that the flight, engine and equipment controls were strategically positioned where your hand goes instinctively, coupled with a 3,600-foot-perminute rate of climb, gave the Hellcat fighter pilot a feeling of unbelievable confidence immediately after leaving the ground.
The only engine tasks that required attention were the adjustments of the oil cooler and engine cylinderhead temperature cooling flaps to keep them under their respective red lines. The shifting of the engine’s mechanical supercharger from main stage to low blower at 8,000 feet and low to high blower above 17,000 feet to be able to obtain maximum power for combat used the same procedures as the Wildcat.
COMBAT MANEUVERS
The Wildcat was a delightful aircraft for aerobatic and spin maneuvers, but the Hellcat’s greater power soon convinced Wildcat-trained pilots that they were in a completely new realm of air-combat superiority. Slow rolls, loops, Immelmanns, lazy eights and snap rolls could now be performed without diving entries.
During air combat, if the Hellcat was inadvertently involved in an accidental upright spin, opposite controls would bring it out immediately. If the Hellcat stalled inverted, it would not spin, even with crossed controls, but it would roll out of the stall and automatically begin to fly upright after the nose
dropped below the horizon. The Hellcat simply didn’t have any nasty habits such as the Vought F4U-1s unannounced accelerated-stall snap rolls that occurred so violently that the aircraft could end up in a spin. I learned these Corsair tricks during my 75 flight hours to evaluate the F4U-1 and F4U-1D Corsairs during WW II.
The Hellcat’s only undesirable fighter characteristic was its need for longitudinal and directional trim changes during airspeed variations because of its positive stabilities in those two axes. This could be annoying at first, but it became habit over time because all of the tabadjustment controls were exactly the same as the Wildcat’s.
These positive stabilities, however, helped reduce the attention the aircraft required in long-range formation cruising conditions, so the pilot could attend to navigation plotting, and in the carrier-landing pattern, keep an eye on the landing signal officer (LSO). The stabilities gave the Hellcat pilot an “auto-pilot feeling” and greatly reduced his fatigue.
Visibility from the cockpit was excellent for almost 360 degrees. Visibility aft was enhanced by a rearview mirror. The Hellcat fuselage’s eight-degree nose-down angle provided excellent visibility for lead corrections when firing the six guns.
CARRIER SUITABILITY: A CARRIER PILOT’S DELIGHT
In the final approach to the carrier, the Hellcat’s visibility was the same as the Wildcat’s but much superior to that of the Vought Corsair with its very long nose. This was again owing to the Hellcat’s cockpit proximity to the aircraft’s nose and the forward fuselage’s eightdegree down-angle design. The Hellcat had the best forward visibility of all carrier aircraft.
Its positive stability on all three axes made it fly as steadily as a rock for the entire landing circuit. But it really showed its robust ability to take structural punishment when the deck heaved in massive swells, and the aircraft had to land on the first pass under difficult conditions such as gross combat damage, pilot fatigue and low fuel in bad weather and darkness.