BUTCHER BIRD VS. HELLCAT & CORSAIR
During WW II, we in the military were not allowed to save notes, keep diaries or take pictures, and being a Boy Scout type, I lived by the rules. Now, decades later, when I’m called to write about some of my flight experiences, I wish that I had bent the rules a little.
Thank goodness I have a copy of our Patuxent Naval Air Test Center “Report of Comparative Combat Evaluation of the Focke-Wulf 190A-4,” which was obtained by Corky Meyer from The Air and Space Museum under the Freedom of Information Act. Using that report for specific test data and as a memory jogger, I will relate some results and impressions from those tests. Keep in mind that this was before there was a test-pilot school in the U.S. We were long on flying experience and very short on technical flight-test experience.
Just back from fleet carrier duty in early 1944, I was transferred to the Tactical Test Center at Patuxent River in Maryland. The skipper, Cdr. F.L. Palmer, greeted me with great enthusiasm and saying “I’m glad to see you! We are loaded with fighter projects, and our last fighter pilot has just been transferred. How many hours do you have in the F6F-3 Hellcat?” I replied, “None.” “How many hours in the F4U-1 Corsair?” “None.” With some dismay, he asked, “What the hell have you been flying?” I told him that although my squadron, the Red Rippers, had always been the first fighter unit to get every new Navy fighter, we were still flying the older F4F-4 Wildcat. I sheepishly told him that I had flown F4F-4s during my Navy fleet career. He looked out a window at a row of planes—all different—and told me to fly them and then come to see him. He must have been pleased by my action because in a few days, he sent for me and told me I was to go to Anacostia, Maryland, to get a German fighter, and I could take Jeanie, my new wife, with me. Having been at sea since our wedding and now having unlimited access to a row of
