The One American Weapon Japan Couldn't Replace Its Losses Fast Enough to Survive
America’s WWII Legacy
42,355 views
America built the one fighter Japan could not match — and on 19 June 1944 it erased roughly 350 aircraft in a single day. The Grumman F6F Hellcat could not out-turn a Zero and never could. What it could do was climb faster, dive faster, absorb hits that killed Japanese pilots, and start every fight from above. Japanese naval aviation would never put a trained carrier air group into the air again.
This documentary reconstructs the Battle of the Philippine Sea from the record: the 1937 Japanese requirement that produced a fighter with no armour and no self-sealing tanks, Grumman's mid-1942 substitution of the 2,000-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800, the truth about the captured Akutan Zero, the hard fighting over Rabaul and the Gilberts in November 1943, the Combat Information Center and the Fighter Director Officers who put 200 Hellcats above the raid before it arrived, and the collapse of a Japanese pilot training pipeline built for a short war.
Built from after-action reports, loss tables and production figures rather than the claim tallies.
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#ww2 #worldwarii #pacificwar #f6fhellcat #zerox #philippinesea #usnavy #navalaviation #wwiihistory #militaryhistory #USAInWW2
20 Comments
John Thatch figured it out, hench the name.
The One American Weapon Japan Couldn't Replace Its Losses Fast Enough to Survive
America’s WWII Legacy
42,355 views
America built the one fighter Japan could not match — and on 19 June 1944 it erased roughly 350 aircraft in a single day. The Grumman F6F Hellcat could not out-turn a Zero and never could. What it could do was climb faster, dive faster, absorb hits that killed Japanese pilots, and start every fight from above. Japanese naval aviation would never put a trained carrier air group into the air again.
This documentary reconstructs the Battle of the Philippine Sea from the record: the 1937 Japanese requirement that produced a fighter with no armour and no self-sealing tanks, Grumman's mid-1942 substitution of the 2,000-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800, the truth about the captured Akutan Zero, the hard fighting over Rabaul and the Gilberts in November 1943, the Combat Information Center and the Fighter Director Officers who put 200 Hellcats above the raid before it arrived, and the collapse of a Japanese pilot training pipeline built for a short war.
Built from after-action reports, loss tables and production figures rather than the claim tallies.
Subscribe for the definitive history of the United States in the Second World War — new documentaries every few days.
#ww2 #worldwarii #pacificwar #f6fhellcat #zerox #philippinesea #usnavy #navalaviation #wwiihistory #militaryhistory #USAInWW2