ROYAL NAVY WILDCATS

Grumman's carrier-based fighter excels in His Majesty's Service

- BY CLIVE ROWLEY, MBE RAF (RET.)

"I would still assess the Wildcat as the outstanding naval fighter of the early years of World War II ... I can vouch as a matter of personal experience that this Grumman fighter was one of the finest shipboard aeroplanes ever created."-British Royal Navy Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown, CBE, DSC, AFC

First Wildcats (“Martlets”)

At the onset of World War II, the British Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm (FAA) had only 232 frontline aircraft on its strength. By 1940, the FAA was in desperate need of a modern carrier-capable fighter to replace and supplement the largely obsolete aircraft in service. Fortunately, the U.S. company Grumman was willing and able to step up to provide their rugged and pugnacious F4F Wildcat to the British. This was the start of a long and successful trend for the Royal Navy (RN) to operate U.S. aircraft during WW II, mostly under the Lend-Lease scheme. Subsequently, the RN also used Vought F4U Corsairs, Grumman Avengers, and Grumman F6F Hellcats.

For the RN in 1940, the F4F was a simple modern design, robust and with performance far ahead of anything the FAA possessed at that time. Best of all, with the fall of France, Belgium, and Greece, large numbers of these aircraft on order for those countries were immediately available. These aircraft, modified versions of the U.S. Navy's F4F designated the Grumman Model G-36A by the manufacturer, became the RN's first high-performance single-seat monoplane, carrier-capable fighters. In service with the RN, the F4F Wildcat was renamed the “Martlet” (after a fictional bird used in heraldry).