General History

The Wildcat was the evolution of the Grumman F3F biplane.  Originally the Wildcat was designed to be a biplane but a major design shift was made in 1936 to make it a cantilever monoplane.  Designated the F4F, its first flight took place in September of 1937.  Fifty-four fixed-winged aircraft were ordered in 1939.  In 1940, the U.S. Navy decided that all future aircraft were to be built with folding wings.  The French ordered 100 aircraft before the war broke out.  When the Germans invaded and France fell, the British took over the deliveries, renaming it the Martlet.

As Grumman got involved in the production of its next fighter, the Hellcat, Wildcats were built under license by General Motors and were designated as FM-2’s.  Wildcat’s played a major role in protecting the American carriers during the Battle of Midway when 4 Japanese carriers were sunk and the war turned in favor of the Americans.  Wildcats were used through 1943 until they were replaced by later designs.

Personal History

Alexis DuPont in New Garden, Pennsylvania had 2 Wildcats, 1 flying and 1 a project.  In 1984, Kermit cut a deal and sent a small deposit to buy the project.  Since Mr. DuPont was unsure of where all the parts were for the project, he wanted to assemble it to flying condition using his other aircraft as a guide.  Many years of slow progress went by with Kermit only having the small deposit to hold the aircraft.  Values had increased 3 times and Kermit got restless.  He paid off the rest of the pre-agreed price and trucked the incomplete aircraft to his shop in Miami.  A total restoration began in 1989.  When the airplane was just about done and ready for paint, Hurricane Andrew came through in 1992 and stopped restoration.  The aircraft was parked inside Kermit’s shop behind a 26-foot wide roll-up door.  Fortunately, a forklift was parked between the door and the aircraft.  The forklift took most of the beating when the door was blown off of its tracks during the storm.  The aircraft sustained minor damage and months later, as the clean up continued, time was found to get back to work on the airplane.  The damage was fixed and the aircraft was finished and test flown within 6 months.  A lot of attention was given to restore this aircraft back to a very original condition.  Armament, armor protection, gun sight and tail hook are all installed.

Kermit Comment

The Wildcat has an interesting flap system that is activated by the vacuum system in the airplane and is also used to spin the gyro instruments for instrument flying.  Instead of using positive pressure to operate the flap cylinder, this aircraft uses negative pressure or suction.  A large tank in the rear of the aircraft stores the negative air pressure.  At higher speeds, the negative pressure does not create enough force to overcome the air loads to lower the flaps.  It will not hurt the system, as in some aircraft, to put the flaps down at high speed.  They just simply won’t come down!  Pilots could use this to their advantage in a dogfight and could select the flap handle down before engaging another aircraft.  If during the dogfight the airplane happened to slow down below a certain speed, the flaps would creep out.  The more the aircraft slowed down, the more flap would creep out.  This gave the Wildcat a tighter turning radius, which was a major advantage in a dogfight, as they could potentially turn inside their opponent and get on his tail.

The Wildcat was the last Grumman fighter that utilized the manual hand-crank gear system.  It was a very strong aircraft design that had no limitations.  No matter what the pilot did with the controls, he could not over-speed or overstress the aircraft.