Grumman F6F-3N / F6F-5N Hellcat night fighters
Radar in a wing pod — the Hellcat as the US Navy and Marines' main night fighter · First flight 1943 · Used until the early 1950s
The first night-fighting Hellcats were 18 F6F-3Es with an AN/APS-4 radar pod under the right wing. The F6F-3N, first flown in July 1943, moved to the AN/APS-6 in a radome on the starboard outer wing; about 200 were built. The F6F-5N applied the same equipment to the improved F6F-5 airframe, and some carried two 20 mm cannon in place of the inner machine guns. Grumman built 1,434 night fighters of both F6F-5 types, most of them F6F-5Ns.
Navy night-fighter detachments flew from fleet carriers, and by 1945 whole night air groups operated from carriers such as USS Enterprise and Bon Homme Richard. Marine night-fighter squadrons used the type from island airstrips and escort carriers — VMF(N)-541 from Peleliu in 1944 and VMF(N)-511 from USS Block Island off Okinawa in 1945 — defending against night raids and hunting shipping and aircraft after dark.
The Royal Navy took F6F-5Ns as the Hellcat NF II. After the war the F6F-5N stayed with US Navy composite night squadrons into the early 1950s; VC-4 'Nightcappers' still had one aboard USS Leyte in the Mediterranean in 1952.
