F4F Wildcat

This study looks at the Grumman F4F Wildcat, the stocky carrier fighter that equipped the US Navy when it entered the Pacific War in December 1941, and at its encounters with the Mitsubishi A6M Zero-sen flown by the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force. The Wildcat, the first of Grumman's 'cat' fighters, was sturdily built and heavily armed, but it could not match the Zero's performance. Even so, in the 1942 carrier engagements between the US Navy and the IJN, its pilots generally held their own against some of the most skilled naval airmen anywhere.

A large share of the Wildcat pilots who fought in the South Pacific belonged to what naval historian John Lundstrom termed the 'First Team', a small group of highly trained aviators who had entered service before the war and who staffed most of the Navy's carrier fighter squadrons.

The book covers the carrier battles of August and October in the South Pacific, which surrounded the first American offensive of the war, the amphibious landing on Guadalcanal, and the Wildcat's combat against IJN carrier aircraft. Key engagements are described alongside rare original photographs and diagrams, and the training and tactics behind the Wildcat's success are examined. Specially commissioned illustrations, including armament views and ribbon diagrams, accompany the text.