CAF Wildcat

I when it was the Navy’s only defensive aircraft. The Wildcat carved out a place for itself through the sheer determination of its pilots--and the airplane’s stubborn unwillingness to be shot down. The outclassed Wildcat held the line against the invading Japanese in places like Guadalcanal, the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Eastern Solomon Islands, and bought the United States precious time to regroup and fight back. A famous Japanese Ace Fighter Pilot wrote; “even after I had poured about five of six hundred rounds directly into the Grumman, the airplane did not fall, but kept on flying….A Zero which had taken that many bullets would have been a ball of fire by now” --Saburo Sakai
During the course of World War II, the 7,860 U.S-built Wildcats destroyed 1,327 enemy aircraft and attained a kill-to-loss ratio of 6.9:1--certainly impressive for an aircraft which was already considered obsolete at the beginning of the war. Today less than a dozen of these planes are flying.