Hellcat: The F6F in World War Two [Hardcover]

The Hellcat; my favorite of all 14 operational Naval aircraft I've flown, including others from "Grumman Iron Works". Mr. Tillman put this old flyer back in that F6F-5 cockpit again. I could smell it, hear it and almost touch that most wonderful of warbirds I've ever had the privilege to fly. I found people in there, who loved it as I did then and still do, that I can identify with; and even some I knew or knew of. The author is a master of drawing the reader into the accounts of those beautiful/horrible days of war in the air, where skill, luck and above all leadership and teamwork were the norms. Mr. Tillman is not new to the Hellcat. Other works of his about the Hellcat are equally satisfying, and his collaboration with one of Naval Aviation's primo photographers, Bob Lawson, gives incredible depth to his writings. I sincerely hope that Mr. Tillman will continue to bring this and other legendary Naval aircraft to their place in history they so richly deserve.

I enjoyed Hellcat by Barrett Tillman but then I'm biased; the Grumman F6F Hellcat has always been one of my favorite planes. The first chapter of the book covers the Hellcat's history, from conception, to manufacturer, introduction to the fleet, and after the war. It's very well done. The remainder of the book covers the Hellcat's combat history in chronological order. The author apparently reviewed every combat report involving Hellcats. I must confirm what other reviewers have noted: that reading every combat engagement involving Hellcats can get tedious at times. Persevering through the material did reveal that Hellcats were frequently outnumbered in dogfights, and that they encountered skilled Japanese pilots, even late in the war. The book also addresses areas that don't get a lot of visibility: Hellcat night fighting and operations in the European theatre. I'd have like to see the book compare the Hellcat to the other great fighters of World War II. But all in all, the book effectively tells the story of the U.S. Navy's primary WWII fighter that performed superbly its assigned task.

The Hellcat was not the most glamorous fighter of World War II. It wasn't the fastest, or the most maneuverable. Visibility wasn't the greatest. If you could choose any World War II fighter to go dogfight with, you would probably pick the Mustang, Spitfire or FW-190 over the Hellcat. That said, the F6F Hellcat was the perfect airplane for the U.S. Navy operating off aircraft carriers in World War II fighting the Japanese. The Hellcat had all the things carrier aviators like: long range, easy to land on the boat, rugged, a powerful, reliable engine, easy to maintain with a high availability rate and the ability to carry lots of ordnance. That its pilots loved it says it all.

Performance-wise, the Hellcat was markedly superior to its primary opponent, the Zero. In aerial combat, speed is life, and the Hellcat was significantly faster than the Zero in both level flight and a dive, and could match it in a climb. The Hellcat had plenty of firepower - six 50 caliber machine guns -- more than enough to take apart the flimsy Japanese fighters and bombers. On the other hand, with armor plating for the pilot and self-sealing fuel tanks, the Hellcat could take punishment from a Zero and keep on flying or at least give its pilot a chance to bail out and live. Unlike the Zero, the Hellcat had a radio that worked - a huge advantage that rarely is mentioned. About the only thing the Zero had over the Hellcat was turn rate in the lower speed range. The Zero was not competitive against the Hellcat, given equal pilot skills.

The above factors explain the great Hellcat air-to-air kill-ratio of 19 to 1: 5,163 downed Japanese aircraft verses 270 Hellcats shot down. In comparison, P-38s shot down 1,700 Japanese aircraft in the Pacific. Armed with Hellcats, U.S. Carrier Task Forces loitered off Japanese strongholds and destroyed all Japanese aircraft there - either in the sky or on the ground. The Japanese simply had no answer for it.

As a major war history buff, this book was NOT by any stretch of the imagination an authoritative book detailing the exploits of the Hellcat.

The main problem with this book is that the Hellcat was involved in so many engagements in the Pacific and elsewheres during World War II that it is simply not possible to write a decent book about it in only 265 pages. And Tillman/McCampbell did not write a good book about it here.

As a result, the book is basically just a summary, filled with lists and lists of Hellcat fighter jocks, the planes they shot down in certain engagements.... and that was pretty much it!

It got to be sort of like reading the Book of Numbers from the Bible.

Nevertheless, I forced myself to slog on, in the hopes that I would find some pearl of wisdom, some brilliant insight, that I had not encountered in another book about WWII.

But there were none.

I give the book two stars only because the book might be interesting to somebody who has not read a lot about WW II aircraft already.

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