The Zero could out-turn the Hellcat at low speed, so Grumman and the Navy fought a different battle. Hellcat pilots used the R-2800’s power and their aircraft’s superior dive and high-speed handling to attack from above, fire a heavy burst from six .50-calibre guns, and climb away before the lighter Zero could respond. The cardinal rule — never turn with a Zero — was reinforced by lessons from a captured example and by hard experience. Combined with armour and self-sealing tanks the Zero lacked, it turned the Pacific air war decisively in America’s favour from late 1943.

In June 1942 a Zero flown by Petty Officer Tadayoshi Koga crash-landed almost intact on Akutan Island in the Aleutians. Recovered and test-flown that autumn, it exposed the Zero’s real weaknesses — stiff ailerons above about 200 knots and an engine that cut out under negative-G. Popular history says the Hellcat was designed from it, but the timeline debunks that: Grumman’s specification was dated February 1941 and the prototype flew before the captured Zero was airworthy. Its true value was tactical — telling US pilots exactly how to fight the Zero.

Grumman built dedicated radar night-fighters — the F6F-3N and -3E, and the later F6F-5N (roughly 1,189 of the latter) — carrying an AN/APS-6 radar pod on the starboard wing, some with 20 mm cannon replacing two machine guns. Flying from carriers and island strips, they countered night intruders and torpedo attacks and extended fleet air defence around the clock in 1944–45.

A Hellcat is often quoted at around US$35,000 in wartime dollars, but that figure is poorly documented and should be treated as approximate — some cost tables list higher numbers, and mass production drove unit prices down over time. No reliable cost-per-flight-hour figure exists for a 1940s piston fighter operated in wartime conditions, so any precise modern ‘per-hour’ number you see attached to the type is an estimate rather than a sourced fact.