F8F Bearcats (World Fighter Aircraft Collection)

A pair of F8F Bearcats fly in tight formation at the 2009 Chino airshow.

The Bearcat was the last in a remarkable line of propeller driven naval fighter aircraft developed by the Grumman Corporation, whose reputation for building rugged aircraft earned it the nickname The Iron Works.  Grumman aircraft were the backbone of the US Navy's fighter force, starting with the F1F, F2F and F3F biplanes and then with wartime models like the F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat and the innovative F7F Tigercat, which saw only limited combat.

The Bearcat arrived just too late for service in World War Two, but it was used extensively afterwards, in Korea by American forces and in Vietnamby the French, before America committed troops to that conflict.   The Bearcat used the same R-2800 radial engine as its predecessor the Hellcat, but it was specifically designed to counter the kamikaze threat as allied forces closed in on the Japanese home islands, so it was made smaller and lighter than the Hellcat in order to be able to climb faster to meet the threat.   It succeeded admirably, coming in with a weight 20% less than the Hellcat, climbing 30% faster and flying 50mph faster.   In 1946 a production F8F posted a new time to altitude record by reaching a height of 10000 feet in only 94 seconds, a feat which was only bettered ten years later by a jet.