Everything about F8f Bearcat totally explained
The
Grumman F8F Bearcat (affectionately called "Bear") was an
American single-engine naval
fighter aircraft of the 1940s. It went on to serve into the mid-20th Century in the
United States Navy and other air forces, and would be the company's final
piston engined fighter aircraft.
Design and development
Designed for the
interceptor fighter role, the design team's aim was to create the smallest, lightest fighter that could fit around the
Pratt & Whitney R2800 engine (carried over from the
F6F Hellcat). Compared to its predecessor, the Bearcat was 20% lighter, had a 30% better rate of climb and was 50 mph (80 km/h) faster. It was also considerably smaller in size, as it was designed to be operated from small
escort aircraft carriers, something the big Hellcat rarely did. Thus the F8F Bearcat was intended mainly as a replacement for the obsolescent
FM2 Wildcat, still the mainstay fighter of the many wartime escort carriers.
In comparison with the Vought
F4U Corsair, the initial Bearcat (F8F-1) was marginally slower but was more maneuverable and climbed faster. Its huge 12' 4" Aero Products four-bladed prop required a long landing gear, giving the Bearcat an easily-recognized, "nose-up" profile. For the first time in a production
Navy fighter, an all-
bubble canopy offered 360-degree visibility.
The Bearcat concept was inspired by an evaluation in early 1943 of a captured
Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter in England by Grumman test pilots and engineering staff. After flying the Fw 190, Grumman test pilot Bob Hall wrote a report he directed to President Leroy Grumman who personally laid out the specifications for Design 58, the successor to the Hellcat, closely emulating the design philosophy that had spawned the German fighter, although no part of the German fighter was copied. The F8F Bearcat would emanate from Design 58 with the primary missions of outperforming highly maneuverable late-model Japanese fighter aircraft such as the
A6M-5 Zero, and defending the fleet against incoming airborne suicide (
kamikaze) attacks.
Unfortunately the target weight was essentially impossible to achieve as the aircraft had to be made stronger for aircraft carrier landings. As a weight saving concept the designers came up with detachable wings; if the
g-force exceeded 7.5g then the tips would snap off, leaving a perfectly flyable aircraft still capable of carrier landing. Unfortunately while this worked very well under carefully controlled conditions in flight and on the ground, in the field, where aircraft were repetitively stressed by landing on carriers and since the wings were slightly less carefully made in the factories, wings tended to break off while the vehicle bombed targets, and the aircraft would then crash. This was replaced with an explosives system to blow the wings off together, which also worked well, however this ended when a ground technician died due to accidental triggering. In the end the wings were reinforced and the aircraft limited to 7.5g.
Grumman's project pilot for the Bearcat series was legendary test pilot
Corky Meyer, who also had this role on the
F6F Hellcat,
F7F Tigercat,
F9F Panther,
XF10F-1 Jaguar, and the
F11F Tiger series. Meyer was head of Grumman Flight Operations at
Edwards Air Force Base from 1952–56.
Another famous name is associated with the type; when asked his favorite aircraft to fly,
Neil Armstrong's immediate and unequivocal answer was "Bearcat". Armstrong had flown the type in 1950 during his Navy Advanced Training, field qualifying in it at age 19.
Operational history
The F8F prototypes were ordered in November 1943 and first flew on
21 August 1944, a mere nine months later. The first production aircraft was delivered in February 1945 and the first squadron was operational by
21 May, but
World War II was over before the aircraft saw combat service.
Postwar, the F8F became a major US Navy fighter, equipping 24 fighter squadrons. Often mentioned as one of the best (if not the best) handling piston-engine fighters ever built, their performance was such that they even outperformed many early jets. Its capability for
aerobatic performance is borne out by the choice of the Bearcat for the Navy's elite
Blue Angels in 1946, who flew it until the team was temporarily disbanded in 1950 (during the
Korean War). The Grumman
F9F Panther and
McDonnell F2H Banshee largely replaced the Bearcat in USN service, as their performance and other advantages eclipsed piston-engine fighters.
An unmodified production F8F-1 set a 1946 time-to-climb record (after a run of 115 feet) of 10,000 feet in 94 seconds. The Bearcat held this record for ten years until it was broken by a modern jet fighter (which could still not match the Bearcat's short takeoff distance).
Other nations that flew the Bearcat included the
French Air Force and
Royal Thai Air Force. French aircraft saw combat service in the
First Indochina War as fighter-bombers in the early
1950s. Nearly 70 surviving aircraft passed to the
Vietnam Air Force upon its creation in 1955.
Air racing
Bearcats have long been popular in
air racing. A stock Bearcat sponsored by Bill Stead won the first
Reno Air Race in 1964.
Rare Bear, a highly-modified F8F owned by
Lyle Shelton, went on to dominate the event for decades, often competing with
Daryl Greenamyer, another famous racer with his own Bearcat victories and a Bearcat world speed record.
Rare Bear also set many performance records, including the 3 km World Speed Record for piston-driven aircraft (528.33 mph (850.26 km/h), set in 1989), and a new time-to-climb record (3,000 meters in 91.9 seconds, set in 1972, breaking the
1946 record cited above).
Operators
