F6F-5K Hellcat (80141) [@ RAF Duxford]
Another product from the Gumman "ironworks". The Hellcat was a strong all-round fighter, effective at any altitude and must be considered to be one of the most successful carrier based aircraft of all time. Hellcats were also operated in the European theatre and with the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, as well as the US Navy and Marine Corps.
On 30 June 1941, less than six months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US Navy placed an order with Grumman for a prototype shipboard fighter to be designated XF6F-1. Early combat experience against the Japanese Mitsubishi Zero fighter led to some important changes being made to the basic concept and it was as the XF6F-3 that the definitive prototype was rolled out to make its first flight on 26 June 1942. First deliveries of the Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat, as the fighter was now known, were made to VF-9 aboard the USS Essex on 16 January 1943, and the aircraft saw its first combat over Marcus, one of the Caroline Islands, on 31 August. From the summer of 1943 the replacement of the Wildcat by the Hellcat in the USN’s fighter squadrons was rapid.
The Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm received 252 F6F-3s as Hellcat Is under the terms of Lend-Lease; the first examples entered service with No 800 Squadron in July 1943, and in the following December, operating from the light escort carrier HMS Emperor, the squadron carried out anti-shipping operations off the Norwegian coast. In addition, the Royal Navy took delivery of 930 F6F-5s as Hellcat IIs, and two squadrons, Nos 891 and 892, were armed with the night fighter version.
80141 appears to have led a "sheltered" WW2 life. Built in 1943, it is the only one flying outside of America and in the photograph appears in the colours of US Navy ace Lt Alex Vraciu who flew this particular aircraft as part of the Navy Fighting squadron VF-6, accounting for nine enemy aircraft in the process. With only 115.7 hours of flying time on the clock, the aircraft was retired from service with VF-6, and was despatched to the newly formed VF-18 who were training at Hilo in the Hawiian Islands, wearing the same markings as she can be seen in today. Another two hundred hours were put on her with VF-18 in the hands of many pilots who were later to become Navy Air aces. For some inexplicable reason she was retired with only 318 flying hours and transferred to the Naval Air Technical Training College in Chicago on the 29th August 1944 where she remained until the end of the war. Passing into a number of private hands, 80141 suffered a number of flying accidents which finally resulted in a rebuild using the centre sections of 08831 during 1985-1888. With a successful Test Flight in July 1989, 80141 was shipped to the UK on 1st August 1990.
