Warbird Information Exchange

I am wondering if "SOP" for F4F/FM2 pilots practicing in the pattern was to roll the gear up and down on every landing cycle. If so that had to make field carrier landing practice a real workout cranking the gear up and down every time.

Roy Gillespie an ace in VF-30 told me you could roll the Wildcat upside down and let the gear free fall into the wells
He also got reported for violation of flying rules at Floyd Bennett Field Not sure if the 2 are related though?

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Don't touch my junk!!

My understanding from talking to Joe Foss is you could indeed retract them more quickly but going inverted at low altitude was a really dumb idea.

30 turns if I remember right, and a possible broken wrist if you let a sweaty hand slip off the crank ))

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Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship

That's all part of being young and invincible. 40 years later
Roy said "I really pulled some stupid sh*t when I was young!"

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Don't touch my junk!!

Off topic question;

When you post something without a quote like this post of yours that I am answering here, how do I know who you were addressing with your comment. For the life of me I can't figure out how people know this.
Is a post in linear format like yours answering the post directly above it?
There doesn't seem to be any other way of knowing who was answered.
I'm probably missing something very obvious but can you advise?
You seem to be the prominent poster on the forum.
Please excuse the off topic insertion. After your reply I'll not extend the topic and it can resume normally.
Thanks
Dudley Henriques

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Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship

If you look at the times the replies were made, we posted on top of each other. So I never even saw yours

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Don't touch my junk!!

I can't say for sure what Wildcat pilots did in WWII but with about 200 hours in a couple of FM-2s in the 1980s and 90s, if I was going to just practice takeoffs and landings, I usually did leave the gear down. Of course, this was after getting used to the normal operations of the gear.

Normally, you operated the ratchet toggle to the gear down position, then cranked slightly up on the gear handle to release the ratchet and then controlled the rate the gear lowered by keeping your hand on the handle until it was down and locked. To raise the gear you moved the toggle to up and cranked about 29 turns. As the gear reaches about half way up, the combination of prop wash and air speed makes it get harder to crank and if I couldn't make a fairly steep climb right after take off, as say in the Tora routine, I had to reduce power until the gear was up and locked.

One thing you have to be careful with is to not let the gear fall down uncontrolled, as this can streach the chains or even damage the gear teeth and result in an unlocked gear. You had to keep your hand on the gear crank handle and lower the gear in a controlled manner. As mentioned, if your hand slipped off the gear crank, you would likely get a nasty crack on the back of your hand and a knot about the size of a silver dollar. It only happened once to me when at a large air show I had just started to lower the gear when another aircraft tried to occupy the same space on downwind. One veteran Wildcat pilot said that if it ever happened again, use your leg to try and keep the gear from dropping uncontrolled - fortunately I never had to test that idea.

Randy