Grumman's successor to the pugnacious Wildcat, the Hellcat embodied many of the lessons learnt by F4F pilots in the opening months of the Pacific war. Introduced to the fleet in January 1943, and blooded in combat against the Japanese by VF-5 seven months later, the F6F served as the principal US Navy fighter on board carrier decks until VJ-Day. Despite its lethality in the air when ranged against the best Japanese fighters, it still retained docile handling qualities around the carrier deck. Pilots flying the Hellcat claimed nearly 5000 kills in the Pacific, and over 350 pilots achieved ace status on the type.
Barrett Tillman is a professional author and speaker with more than 40 nonfiction books as well as novels to his credit.
He holds seven awards for history and literature including the 1996 Tailhook Association Lifetime Achievement Award and third place in the US Naval Institute Prize in 2009. Tillman has appeared in more than a dozen documentaries including The History Channel's Dogfights.
Iain Wyllie was one of Britain's leading - and most prolific - aviation cover artists. A native of Northern Ireland, he trained as a naval draughtsman and became a full-time aviation artist in the late 1980s. He has been responsible for creating numerous cover artworks for Osprey Publishing's hugely successful Aircraft of the Aces and Combat Aircraft series since 1994. His artwork is synonymous with originality of subject, intricate detail and technical accuracy.
MIKE CHAPPELL comes from an Aldershot family with British Army connections stretching back several generations. He enlisted as a teenage private in the Royal Hampshire Regiment in 1952 and retired in 1974, as RSM of the 1st Battalion The Wessex Regiment (Rifle Volunteers), after seeing service in Malaya, Cyprus, Swaziland, Libya, Germany, Ulster and home garrisons. He began painting military subjects in 1968 and has gained worldwide popularity as a military illustrator. Mike has written and illustrated many books for Osprey.
Mark Styling is better known to readers of Osprey Publishing's Aircraft of the Aces and Combat Aircraft series as the profile artist for such books as
Hellcat Aces of World War 2, Japanese Army Air Force Aces 1937–45 and
P–61 Units of World War 2. A full-time commercial artist, Mark works from his home in the East London suburb of Hackney.
Having initially worked for Osprey as an author in the 1980s,
Tony Holmes became the company's aviation editor in 1989 after he moved to England from Western Australia. Responsible for devising the
Aircraft of the Aces, Combat Aircraft, Aviation Elite Units, Duel and
X-Planes series, Tony has also written more than 30 books for Osprey over the past 35 years.
