The Grumman F7F Tigercat is a synthesis of brilliancy in the quest for military aviation during the mid-20th century.
It was this heavy fighter aircraft, with service by the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps in the last phases of World War II to 1954, that marked the first time a USN used a twin-engine fighter.
Although already too late to see active service in World War II, the Tigercat continued to an operational career during the Korean War as a night fighter and attack aircraft.
Although intended to be used on the new Midway-class aircraft carriers, the F7F Tigercat was nonetheless too large for earlier carrier decks. In any case, most of the early models built thus flew from land bases.
This aircraft was powerfully armed, with four 20 mm cannons and four 0.50 in 12.7 mm machine guns, besides underwing and under-fuselage hardpoints for carrying bombs and torpedoes.
A special version was the F7F-3 with two radial piston Pratt & Whitney R-2800-34W engines.
It was a single-seater version of a fighter bomber, built to correct defects identified by the earlier types, which included bad directional stability when flying on a single engine and some faults with the tail-hook design. It met several problems in carrier suitability trials.
The United States Marine Corps night fighter squadron VMF(N)-513 was operating F7F-3N Tigercats early in the Korean War.
Those aircraft saw sorties that included night interdiction and fighter missions. Among their victims were two Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes. That would be the only combat experienced by the Tigercat.
The operational service of the Tigercat also included its use as a controller for drones in combat training. Many F7F-2Ns were so converted with bubble canopies over the rear cockpit for the drone controller.
An F7F-2D saw also served as a transition trainer and was equipped with a rear sliding, bubble canopy.
In 1945, the British Royal Navy did take two Tigercats on trial but rejected them for a navalized version of that de Havilland Hornet.
However, the Tigercat did find a niche role after its military career. From 1949, hundreds of F7Fs were flown to the US Navy storage facility at NAS Litchfield Park in Arizona.
Most were chopped up, however, and several took on new lives in the 1960s and 1970s as water bombers fighting wildfires. In Santa Rosa, Calif., Sis-Q Flying Service flew an F7F-3N tanker, bfd until its retirement in the late 1980s.
Today, many F7F Tigercats are still flying while others are mounted in museums throughout the United States.
Such survivors say much for the unique place that the Tigercat occupies in the record books of aviation history, really combining fearsome firepower with twin-engine design challenges in a carrier-based fighter.
The Grumman F7F Tigercat was an aircraft of very great importance in the history of military flying, simply because it was so powerful and speedy an aircraft, representing technological achievements and operational challenges at that time.