Wildcat

Some must-see videos that give you some overview of the Wildcat. The Allies flew this aircraft throughout the war.

The video shows you also, its amazing engineering simplicity.

Wildcat part 1.

Wildcat part 2.

Wildcat part 3.

One thing the video doesn't show is that an unofficial "procedure". That, as the landing gear takes a lot of cranking to get up and down, you could get around this by, at the break above the airfield, set the crank for landing, start the crank a bit, pull the aircraft at the break with some mild G, release the handle, be careful with your right leg, and the gear handle would spin pretty fast, avoiding all that cranking to get the gear down and locked.

The Wildcat was obsolete at the start of the war but still useful. With safe tactics (given the limited capability of the aircraft) the Wildcat got an air combat kill-to-loss ratio of 5.9:1 in 1942 and 6.9:1 for the entire war.

Math. The allies had a continuous pilot pipeline and the ability to produce lots of aircraft.

The ability to take losses.

The enemy had a poor pilot pipeline system.