BEST FIGHTER PACIFIC THEATER
As I did with the ETO fighter aircraft, I have ranked these Pacific theater of operations (PTO) warbirds to see how they compare. They are ranked in increasing order of their contributions (from 3 to 1).
3 MITSUBISHI A6M5 ZERO
In 1937, Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the “Claude,” agreed with the Japanese Navy’s requirement that a carrier-based fighter should have a much longer range and greater speed than the fixed-gear Claude. The Navy specified new requirements for a retractable-landing-gear fighter that would be capable of a 310.5mph top speed and of reaching an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) in three minutes, 30 seconds; with an external tank, it should have a cruise range of 10 hours at 131mph. Armament was to consist of two Type 99, 20mm cannon—Mark l, Model 3—two Type 97, .30-caliber machine guns and two 132-pound bombs.
The production and combat experience gained with the Claude were used to develop the requirements for the new fighter; it was soon to be known worldwide as the A6M2 Zero. On April 1, 1939, only 11 months after the requirements had been finalized, the A6M2 Zero made its first flight. On July 31, 1940, it entered squadron combat service in China, 16 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor! Mass production led to the completion of 10,449 before the end of the war—twice as many as were produced by any other Japanese WW II fighter manufacturers.
With its China combat background, the Zero would have been higher in the list of contenders were it not for several serious flaws. It was designed with WW I dogfighting in mind, so it was very light to ensure a sterling rate of climb and close-combat turning agility. But to get that performance, the pilot and engine armor, the self-sealing fuel tanks and a high diving speed with good controllability had to be sacrificed. In addition, its structure did not lend itself to decentralized, modern production schemes.
The Zero was a great contender until U.S. Navy and Marine pilots rapidly found out how to engage it successfully in combat against the Grumman Wildcat at Guadalcanal: get behind it, shoot and dive away faster than the Zero’s limited dive speed. The Wildcat scored a 9-to-1 kill-to-loss ratio from Pearl Harbor until mid-1943, when Grumman’s F6F-3 Hellcat and Vought F4U-l Corsair rapidly removed any chance of the Zero’s winning the future aerial war.
Had the war ended at the end of 1942, the Zero would have been considered one of the very best fighters ever designed. However, as the war progressed, this 1939 design did not age well compared with its rapidly progressing enemies. While it was superb in the role for which it was designed, the role of the fighter changed rapidly, leaving the Zero in its wake.
2 VOUGHT F4U-L CORSAIR
The beautiful, gull-wing Chance Vought
F4U series was designed specifically for carrier operations but had such an abysmal accident rate that it was removed from carrier service after its first suitability tests in September 1942. Not until December 1944 was it restored to carrier operations—two years later than promised.
Another major disadvantage of the Corsair was that it was the first, state-of-the-art, carrier-based fighter Chance Vought designed for wartime mass production, so the aircraft suffered from that company’s lack of knowledge and experience of fighters. This, combined with the aircraft’s experimental Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine failure (which caused the crash of its only prototype), its more difficult, flush-riveted, double-curvature fuselage skins and its complicated gull-wing structure (which required that all the fuel-tank capacity be moved into the fuselage), greatly delayed the Corsair’s planned deployment to the Pacific.
Its flight characteristics, however, made it a fighter pilot’s dream. All the pilots who flew it lauded its low stabilities and light control forces. Its powerful aileron control gave it a very fast rolling rate for combat maneuvers—one that was exceeded by only a few other fighters. Capt. Marion Carl, a highly decorated
U.S. Marine Corps ace flying the Corsair at Guadalcanal, stated that it was “the greatest fighter” he ever flew.
For the land-based requirement, the F4U-1 was deployed to Guadalcanal on February 12, 1943. It replaced the Grumman Wildcat in larger numbers and had a much greater combat capability. During the next two years, it was used for the much-needed land-based Navy and Marine fighter and fighter-bomber islandhopping operations that led up to the invasion of Japan, which never occurred. It performed splendidly, shooting down 2,140 enemy aircraft and making 93 U.S. aces with an 11-to-1 kill-to-loss ratio. At the same time, it dropped thousands of tons of bombs and rockets in its ground-support role. But that wasn’t the role the U.S. Navy had wanted it to play.
1 GRUMMAN HELLCAT
From December 7, 1941, to August 1943, the Grumman Wildcat provided the U.S. Navy with the numbers of aircraft it required for the land and carrier-based fighters needed for the first 18 months of the hostilities. The F6F-3 Hellcat then took over and satisfied the fast-carrier-deployment-schedule requirement until December 1944 when the Corsair at last became carrier qualified. The F6F-3 Hellcat’s design, tooling, manufacturing and flight-delivery personnel were also the ones who had continuously delivered Wildcats and four other earlier Grumman fighter models to the U.S. Navy; successful carrier operations had been the norm since 1930. Grumman had well-founded carrier-fighter experience on which to base the design of the Hellcat.
Grumman’s F6F-3 Hellcat grew out of the Navy’s request to put the more powerful 1,700hp Wright R-2600 engine in the Wildcat. The Wildcat’s structure, small control surfaces, narrow landing gear and need for a larger-diameter propeller would have required too many major changes to accommodate this 500hp increase. In September 1940, Grumman envisioned a new fighter using information garnered from the British war experience. The Navy had high hopes that its requirements for a high-performance carrier fighter would be met by the Vought F4U-1 Corsair, which had first flown on May 29, 1940. In January 1942, the Navy gave Grumman the go-ahead to produce 1,080 Hellcats as backups to the Corsair.
The Hellcat was designed for the Pratt & Whitney R-2800-10 2,000hp engine, six .50-caliber guns and a centerline bomb rack that would hold a 150-gallon fuel tank or a 1,000-pound bomb. It also had a 1,000-pound-bomb rack on the right wing stub. Bob Hall flew the prototype on July 30, 1942, and Cdr. Fred Trapnell flew it twice in September 1942 and gave it the Navy’s approval for mass-production. Grumman delivered 12 Hellcats in 1942 and 2,566 in 1943. By January 1944, Grumman was producing 500 a month, and in March 1945, the monthly
production rate hit 605—a U.S. fighter-production delivery record that stood for the entire war.
In addition to its fighter, fighter-bomber and bomber support roles, 229 Hellcat F6F-3Ns and 1,432 F6F-5Ns (with the APS-4 and -6 radar mounted on the left wing) were successfully used as night fighters. With cameras in its aft fuselage, the Hellcat also filled the photo recon role as the F6F-3P and
-5P. When the F6F-5 production was started in early 1944, adding a second, 1,000-pound-bomb rack to the left wing stub and six, wing-mounted 5-inch HVAR rocket racks increased its armament capabilities to 3,000 pounds of bombs. Few SBDs or TBF Avenger bombers were ever lost in an aerial attack after the Hellcat began bomber-support operations. As the war progressed, the number of Hellcats on all carriers was constantly increased to take over the strike/attack duties of the SB2C Helldiver and the TBF/TBM Avenger. Navy records show that within the 100 combat-aircraft capacity of the Essex-, Saratoga- and Enterprise-class carriers, the Hellcats increased in number from 36 in mid-1943 to 54 in mid-1944 and to 73 in November 1944.
Navy pilots repeatedly suggested that their 12,275 Hellcats came from the “Ironworks” because it could take so much combat punishment. It was flown to the war’s end in all four fighter roles and was considered a “grandfather’s airplane” for its gentle handling characteristics.
Conclusion
The Grumman Hellcat accounted for 62 percent of all enemy aircraft shot down by the Navy and Marine
Corps and for 43 percent of the total shot down by all U.S. fighters in the Pacific. This more than gives it the top score in the air-to-air fighter role in the Pacific. Its fighter-bomber ground-support, photo recon, night-fighter and bomber-support role capabilities adequately qualify it for the accolade of being the best fighter in the Pacific theater.