August 2019 35I fully realize that the following dissertation on preflight, takeoff,
cruise, and landing will be seen by experienced pilots as monotonous
overkill—and too much detail. My thought here, however, is explain
the airplane to the non-warbird pilot, paying special attention to the
detail freaks, and to show the complexities and idiosyncrasies of even
the simplest of World War II fighters. Note that the following is based
on an FM-2 Wildcat with the original Bakelite brakes and a hard-
rubber carrier tailwheel. After about 50 hours, we exchanged the orig-
inal brake shoes for heavy-duty truck lining and found a pneumatic
tailwheel. These two things vastly improved the ground handling.
Of the 7,860 Grumman-designed
Wildcats built, 5,280 of them
were built by the Eastern Aircraft
Division of General Motors.
(Photo by David Leininger)