Greg Shelton's Wildcat acro

Greg Shelton's Air Show promo.

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People & Blogs

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• Greg Shelton
• Wildcat
• Warbird
• Aerobatics
• Grumman
• F4F
• FM2

[todddoom]

The Hellcat and Corsair got most of the glory but, Wildcats using the Thatch weave did the hardest fighting of the war.

[justforever96]

@todddoom That's what I always say. The Hellcat may have been a better plane, but the Wildcat was no slouch, and the war would've been lost without it and the brave rookies flying it. By the time the Hellcat hit the scene, we were already "over the hump", so to speak, and the Hellcat wouldn't have gotten such phenomenal kill tallies if they were all facing such well trained Japanese pilots as the Wildcat boys were fighting.

[saranovitch]

Ample power, handsome stying. It is tight on passenger and trunk space though.

[GutpileCharlie]

Damn! Don't you just love the sound of that engine God intended all engines to be "round". Any other way just isn't right.

[kaysandesses]

@justforever96 We're saying the same thing, just in a different way. : )

[justforever96]

@kaysandesses NOTE: By "exaggeration", I don't mean that the numbers are necessarily lies (no more than the claimed kills by any side are, anyway), I just mean that the plane isn't quite as superb as the kill/loss ratio would suggest. If the war had begun with the same ratio of trained pilots and the US had Hellcats instead of Wildcats, they would still have lost quite a few pilots on the "learning curve", I suspect.

[justforever96]

@kaysandesses Oh certainly, but that just makes the Hellcat's advantage in kills all the more exaggerated...the US pilots got practice and killed off the best Japanese pilots (along with the ones that went down with their carriers at Midway), so when the better Hellcat came along it was with lots of expirienced US pilots against rookie Japanese pilots in inferior planes. While the Hellcat could stand against the best any day, the ridiculously high kill/loss ratio is an exaggeration, I think.

[kaysandesses]

Does anyone happen to know of any good books telling the story of Wildcat pilots?

[kaysandesses]

@justforever96 I'm sure that a lot of those Hellcat pilots started out in the Wildcat and the advantage of their experience helped the Hellcat numbers along a bit.

[RCboy221]

hi im buildinga 1/5 scale model of this plane and was wondering if you can get a video of where the exhaust are placed on both sidesand how many tubes there are.

[todddoom]

@justforever96 Well put.