30. “The Ace Maker”
The F6F Hellcat’s standard armament was six .50 caliber machines, but some planes substituted a pair of 20mm canon for two of the machine guns. F6Fs could also carry a pair of 1000-pound bombs, but their most destructive load for ground attacks was half a dozen 5-inch rockets, whose salvoes exceeded a destroyer’s broadside.
Although Hellcats did not enter service until the final two years of the war, they downed 5156 enemy aircraft. The Hellcat was nicknamed “The Ace Maker” for the seeming ease with which its aviators achieved that status: 307 F6F pilots became aces during the war. The plane achieved an enviable 19:1 kill ratio, and accounted for 75 percent of the US Navy’s air-to-air victories.