Grumman XF4F-1 Wildcat

[Clifford Bossie]

This is one of those "just for fun" posts. As most of us know the Wildcat was originally envisioned to be a biplane, but due to the need for higher speeds the redundant wing went away and the Wildcat became famous as a monoplane. Well, "what would a biplane "Wildcat" look like?" you might ask. Here is my answer:

Fighting Six aboard the USS Enterprise:



And all six carriers in service in the late 1930's:



Gee, you think there might be one hidden in a barn somewhere?

[C VEICH]

Don't we just normally call that an F3F?

[Clifford Bossie]

Don't we just normally call that an F3F?

The XF4F-1 would have been an outgrowth of the F3F-3, just as the F3F shared a common heritage with the F2F and FF-1. I have read that the F4F-1 was to have a Wright R-1670 vs. the F3F-s R-1820. The F4F-1 would have had a shorter wingspan than the F3F as well. In any case all drawings are merely speculation.

[old iron]

A shorter wingspan and one less set of wings. What did that do to the wing loading?

[JohnCFord]

This looks like a perfect post for Martt Clupper at Airpigz.com... For those of you that don't know it's a site that is "Hog wild about anything that flies". Martt makes these types of "what if" posts all the time. You should go check it out.

~J~

[Clifford Bossie]

A shorter wingspan and one less set of wings. What did that do to the wing loading?

The XF4F-1 still would have had two wings, with a wingspan of 27' vs. the F3Fs of 32' (don't know about wing area.). The XF4F-2 had a wingspan of 34'. The XF4F-1 would probably have had a wing loading similar to the F3F, or maybe a little higher, but we will never know as it did not even reach the stage of a movkup.