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Background
- Promoted to CAG ( Commander – Air Group ) Air Group 15 February 1944, on USS Essex CV-9, VF-15 called themselves “Satan’s Playmates”. This put him in charge of the entire Essex air group – bombers, fighters and torpedo planes. This group would earn the nickname the “Fabled Fifteen”. In recognition of his leadership of the “Fabled Fifteen”, outstanding feats downing 34 enemy planes, his mission of October 24, 1944 where he and another pilot took on overwhelming numbers of Japanese planes and turned them back with McCampbell accumulating 9 of his 34 kills, McCampbell became the USN top ace and was awarded: Congressional Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, Silver Star Medal, Legion of Merit, and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
- The Grumman F6F Hellcat was a fighter aircraft descended from the earlier F4F Wildcat, but was a completely new design sharing only a familial resemblance to the Wildcat. Some tagged it as "Wildcat's big brother" . The Hellcat and the Vought F4U Corsair were the primary United States Navy carrier fighters in the second half of World War II.
- The Hellcat proved to be the most successful aircraft in naval history, destroying 5,171 aircraft while in service with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps (5,163 in the Pacific and eight more during the invasion of Southern France), plus 52 with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm during World War II. Postwar, the Hellcat aircraft was rapidly phased out of front line service, finally retiring in 1954 as a night-fighter in composite squadrons.
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