Grumman F6F Hellcat
The Ace Maker
“The carrier fighter that broke the Zero.”
Grumman · military
Grumman built the Hellcat to beat the Zero and it did exactly that: bigger, heavier, armoured and far more powerful, it could dive away from a Zero and out-climb it, and Navy pilots claimed over 5,000 kills in it, three quarters of the Navy's air-to-air victories in the war. It flew from the summer of 1943 to the end and it was so easy to fly that it made aces out of average pilots. Sixteen fly today.
In a single day at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, Hellcats shot down hundreds of Japanese aircraft for the loss of a few dozen of their own.
A big, slab-sided fighter with a wide-track undercarriage that folds backward, a tall canopy and a wing that is noticeably low on the fuselage. Navy blue, almost always.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Ace Maker from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
