Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat gear swing test
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- čas přidán 8. 05. 2022
- Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat gear swing test during scheduled maintenance. The gear is extended mechanically by the pilot utilising a hand crank. It takes between 28-32 turns of the crank from fully retracted to fully extended and locked position and the same number of turns to reverse the process.
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I recently learned that this birds landing gear had to be manually cranked to put them up or down. It's unbelievable to me what those aviators had to deal with after a dog fight.
It was intentional to give the pilot some time to relax and compose himself between the action and the landing. Like a mantra: crank... crank... crank... crank...
Grumman philosophy was to keep things simple.
47 turns of the crank while flying straight and level in formation.
As I was told many years ago by some former Navy pilots with F-4 experience, you could tell the experienced pilots from their stable flight off the deck. The low-time pilots would wobble during climb out as they worked the gear crank in one hand and held the stick in the other.
True. But nothing compared to what an infantrymen had to process.
I can't imagine the stress of the pilots hurrying to crrank it down during an emergency landing. Btw. Would like to see more of this plane. Looks beautiful from what I did see of it.
You have plenty of time to do it usually. Not normally a time-sensitive thing to do. And if it is, nothing wrong with landing without the gear.
There was a commonly used informal trick of simply unlocking the landing gear and performing a 90 degree turn to have inertia and gravity help you lower the gear.
@@Jamesbrown-xi5ihWell usually when you meed to urgently get the gear down, you don't have the energy to waste on unnecessary turns
@@Combatant5 A good landing is one you walk away from. A great landing is one where you can use the aircraft again.
I read about one that flipped over due to the new pilot forgetting to lower the gear.
As the emergency crews approached the upside down wildcat they observed the gear slowly raising up into the air. The new pilot realized ehat he did and was trying to avoid the chewing out by lowering the gear and covering his mistake.
The emergency crews about died laughing.
This seems like an urban legend. I’ve also heard this attributed to a T-28 near NAS Whiting Field by two Instructor Pilots back in the 1960s. This came from a former T-34C IP who still teaches as a civilian. This may have happened to some aircraft at some time, but I feel like someone made it up for the laughs, or both might be true. I’d love to hear where you found the Wildcat story.
@@bladfadsfblaadsfsadf900 I believe it was in John Glenns biography.
There’s a mention of a student doing this in a T-6 in Wayne Bise’s “Cruiser Flyboy”. Then again, that’s a fictionalized account of the author’s service, so take it with a grain of salt.
All invented,drawn and worked out with a pencil,slide rule and paper …… brilliant !!!!
Probably a compass in there. 😁
I had to use a slide rule in my drafting classes back in the 70s. The teacher was old school no calculators allowed
Even more crazy, they designed the SR-71 from scratch that way. Those guys really knew what they were doing.
The entire Apollo program was designed with slide rules.
@@Sherwoody Not slide related, but amazing how they did it. czcams.com/video/6mMK6iSZsAs/video.html
You can clearly hear all 28 turns of the lever on gear needed to fully retract/deploy the landing gear..
One of the coolest retractions of any WW2-era fighter, in my opinion.
There was a tendency of the AC to "porpoise" slightly while the pilot operated the crank.
I wonder why? The same as the manual pumping on early Spitfires. Any time you have to manually handle an undercarriage you will get a sympathetic movement of the controls.
That’s so cool!
No imagine a pilot fresh from a combat sortie. His adrenaline is spent he wants to get back on the ship without crashing, his muscles feel like jelly and now he has to hand crank his landing gear down.
They usually didn't bother.
There was an informal, but commonly used technique where you would simply unlock the landing gear lever and then perform a 90 degree turn to drop the landing gear for you.
@@Jamesbrown-xi5ih really I did know this I figured that the system had a break to keep the gear from dropping while cranking it up or down.
Combat wouldn’t matter. It’s muscle memory by that point, just like flying was.
@@PTRRanger951 muscle memory means nothing when your exhausted amd trying to get back to ship.
@@patrickradcliffe3837except it does. That’s why it’s muscle memory. So it can be done without thinking. It’s also one less thing that can fail or get shot up, then you don’t have gear. That’s why it was like that, to keep it easy.
Definitely rather crank this landing gear than a 109's flaps. Awesome!
Happy to see it is still hand cranked.
I completely forgot these things were hand cranked... holy crap if it was me forget it I think I would place here in the drink- massive respect to those pilots who flew her and fly her still
So ingenious and cool!!
There are interesting engineering solutions to folding landing gear like the F4F. The B-52, F-111, C-5, notable mentions.
Fascinating. 👍🏻
!!! Excelente !!! 👌👏
Sick bro
This is my favorite plane
Can someone post a video explaining the hand cranking operation of raising and lowering the landing gear on the Wildcat??
If y’all think this is bad, imagine being enlisted as a Tanker at the time… that turret didn’t always have electrical power.
This is just an anecdote, but supposedly it worked as a ratchet system. So many pilots would release the ratchet rather than turning the handle to lower the landing gear, letting gravity or centrifugal forces do the work for them. None of the accounts mention if that damaged the landing gear.
Aw thats adorable
Я думал в ручную,при помощи "терщетки", шасси убиралось только на И 16...😂
Ever wonder how many times tires were shot up in combat and when it was time to land it was ....well bumpy to say the least!
Manual cranking would be strenuous to aviators after intense flight.
I wonder how wounded a pilot coped with having to lower the gear.
I should think they'd have other things to worry more about, if an injury was able to impede the undercarriage cranking.
Don't forget the ammunition used air to air wasn't exactly small.
Cool
It's like having hand crank windows on your car! 🤣
So it is retracted and deployed manually, with a crank?
Instead of down and locked lights, you just recognize the arm pain.
Hahaha😂
It’s funny that everyone thinks this hand cranked gear is terrible. Personally I think it’s a great idea a lot less to go wrong and who cares if you had to turn a crank. It’s just like crank windows in a car. I have 2 cars one has manual cranked windows and the other has those god forsaken electric ones. I’ve never thought about the crank windows but every time I drive the other car with the electric ones I think wow these are horrible. They are slow, don’t work without the key on, seem to break down a lot, ect. I don’t know who decided electric windows where a “feature” but there is a special place in hell for that person.
Was it the wild cat or hell cat that was better? I always get them mixed up, and how flimsy was that under carage 😬
Hellcat was the wildcats replacement, the hellcat was made to counter the Japanese A6M Zero's
28 crank turns..!
Nice... the tires were so vulnerable... I wonder how many mishaps were due to shot out tires?
Landing gear doors didn't provide any meaningful protection.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 The doors provided no protection at all, they were basically a skin of aluminum a couple of millimeters thick.
Covers for landing gear are purely for aerodynamics.
Um mini trem de pouso, em comparação com o tamanho do avião, deveria ter sérias restrições de estabilidade e frenagens.
You think they could get them any closer?
They don't call it 'narrow track' for nothing.
Then put a tiny British carrier deck under it.
people who play war thunder automatically know this planes gear had a crank you had to spin
Зато Надёжно!!!
Just another reason why this aircraft was eclipsed by the F6F Hellcat.
かすかにSteppenwolfの Magic Carpet Ride が聴こえる気がする．．．
Good ol hand cranking. Lol
It doesn't look like it was designed by some talented engineer.
That's cool. It's manual ? That's not good. What if the pilot is wounded ?
Basically. Sucks to be them. They have more to worry about than the landing gear if they're wounded.
@@RedTail1-1 Agreed
Which generation was this?
@@mikebeard8505 I don't understand the question. I was just expressing surprise that the landing gear is controlled manually.
All done with a hand crank.
Can you imagine having to crank this thing down with a bullet lodged in your arm or leg, all while keeping the aircraft on the correct glide path to land on a moving, rocking aircraft carrier?
This is what I was going to say. Everyone is say ohh the stress about returning from combat and the adrenaline and then having to crank. Screw that, what if you’re injured and can’t crank it? That’s the bigger issue. Stress or Adrenaline won’t even be a factor because it’s all muscle memory. Getting injured changes that.
The pilot needs to do about 29 stick rotations
Window crank from hell, manual gear.
Isn’t it FM-2
He'll ya
Ручной привод уборки шасси и выпуска
IL-2 1946 be like
*ctrl-G x 100*
Такое ощущение что ,,летчик,, в кабине самолета ручку подьемника раками крутит...😉😮
so no hydraulics
1930년대에 저런걸 만들다니... 미국 찬양해!
手動なのか…
米軍機は全て油圧式だと思ってた
Not all.
And all aircraft had manual backups, even the big bombers.
That’s an FM-2
Gravity operated...easier to lower than to raise (the ones later built by GM were motorized)
That does look like an Fm2 but the Fm2 had manual gear as well
@markmclaughlin2690 You are correct: having researched it, the motorized LG was put in on the Hellcats, not the F4Fs & FMs. Will later delete the statement
Was always strange to me how one of the coolest looking planes had one of the ugliest sets of landing gear.
“Mhm.”
🤦♂️
They can rebuild an 80 year old plane, but can’t turn the phone to landscape …smh
Not sure it’s fair to call it a swing test…
Looks more like an FM-2?
It is an FM-2 there are no F4F-4’s flying. There is only one F4F-3 flying
Was thinking the same, the FM-2's typically hard this navy blue color. At least the ones I've seen.
@@carlossiordia9645 Not to mention the exhaust over the wing. F4F's were under the wing, just fwd of the gear.
Действительно просто! Зачем просто убирать шасси когда можно как на "кэте"!