HISTORY

GRUMMAN’S F4F-3 WILDCAT

PART ONE

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

The F4F-3 was the outcome of a development process by Grumman in response to

a 1938 U.S. Navy requirement for a replacement for the F3F biplane fighters. The

Navy was conservative in its planning;

while the Brewster Aircraft Co. would

create a monoplane, the XF2A-1, Grumman

was asked to create another biplane fighter, the XF4F-1. Grumman convinced the

Navy that, with a few modifications, the

F3F-2 could meet the requirements of the

XF4F-1; this became the F3F-3, and Grumman was able to proceed with its own

monoplane design, the XF4F-2.

How it was that the XF4-2, designed and

built by the Navy‘s premier fighter design

company, lost out to the XF2A-1, the first

aircraft design by a company primarily

known for building horse drawn buggies

during the 19th century, with no experience of aircraft production, is a bureaucratic mystery that has never been fully explained. Luckily for the Navy and history,

Grumman convinced the Bureau of Aeronautics to allow them to rework the design

a third time, resulting in the XF4F-3. It had

marginally better performance than the

F2A 1, which had just entered production;

Brewster was already demonstrating its

inability to meet production schedules,

and the Navy was glad to be able to order the new fighter from the more reliable

company.

The first production F4F-3 flew in February 1940, powered by a Pratt and Whitney

R-1830-76 Twin Wasp with a two stage

supercharger, with the second following

that July. In April 1940, due to fears of

production delays with the two stage supercharger, the Navy asked Grumman to

change the airplane to use the R-1830-90

Twin Wasp with single stage supercharger. This became the F4F-3A, 55 of which

were given to the Marines in 1941, when

they did not have the necessary high altitude performance with the single stage

supercharger. The last 100 F4F-3s were

powered by the R-1830-86 Twin Wasp with

a two stage supercharger; these were visually indentifiable from the early F4F-3s

and F4F-3As by the absence of an intake

on the upper cowling, that having been

moved inside the cowl, and the presence

of additional cowling flaps. (A further 100

F4F-3s, which were produced in 1942 for

the “Wildcatfish” floatplane fighter, were

used as trainers following cancellation of

that program.)

VF-41 was the first to equip with the F4F3, arriving aboard USS Ranger (CV-4)

on 4 December 1940. VF-42 aboard USS

Yorktown (CV-5) quickly followed along

with VF-71 and VF-72 aboard USS Wasp

(CV-7) in February 1941. VF-6 on USS Enterprise (CV-6) re-equipped with F4F-3s

F4F-3 of VF-6 on hangar deck of USS Enterprise (CV-6), fall 1941.

6

INFO Eduard

August 2022