Grumman FF Fifi
The Grumman FF "Fifi" was a two-seat biplane carrier fighter of the early 1930s and Grumman's first complete aircraft. The record spans the FF-1 fighter, the SF-1 scout and the FF-2 trainer conversion built by Grumman, plus the 52 licence-built Canadian Car & Foundry G-23s exported as the Spanish GE-23 Delfín and flown by Canada as the Goblin Mk.I. The FF was the first carrier aircraft with retractable landing gear, served with the U.S. Navy from 1933, fought in the Spanish Civil War and guarded Canada's east coast in 1940–42. The sole survivor, a Nicaraguan G-23 restored as an FF-1, is displayed at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.
Why It Mattered
The FF was the first complete aeroplane built by the Grumman company, founded by Leroy Grumman in December 1929. Grumman had won the U.S. Navy's confidence building metal pontoon floats with retractable wheels for other makers' aircraft. Asked whether that gear could be adapted to existing fighters, Grumman proposed an entirely new two-seat fighter instead, and the Navy accepted. The FF was the first carrier aircraft with retractable landing gear. Vintage Aviation News credits the type with helping put Grumman on the map, and with paving the way for the company's later reputation as the "Iron Works".
Design Notes
The FF was a two-seat biplane whose pilot and observer-gunner sat in tandem under an enclosed canopy. Its fuselage was all-metal, while the wings were covered largely with fabric. The main landing gear retracted into the sides of the deep fuselage and was worked by a hand crank in the cockpit. A single Wright Cyclone radial powered it; with a 750 hp R-1820-F fitted, the prototype reached 201 mph, faster than any U.S. Navy fighter then in service. Armament was two fixed .30-calibre machine guns in the nose and a flexible gun for the rear cockpit. The companion SF-1 scout variant traded its forward-firing guns for extra fuel tanks.
Operational History
Test pilot William McAvoy made the prototype's first flight from Curtiss Field, New York, on 29 December 1931. Production FF-1s entered frontline service in June 1933 with squadron VF-5B aboard the carrier Lexington, and crews nicknamed the type "Fifi". Grumman built only 27 FF-1s; 25 were later converted by the Naval Aircraft Factory into FF-2 dual-control fighter-trainers. The dedicated scout version, the SF-1, followed with 33 airframes. Single-seat fighters such as Grumman's own F2F and F3F pushed the two-seaters out of front-line squadrons, and by the late 1930s they served in training and reserve units. The last FF-2s were stricken in July 1942 and the last SF-1s in June 1943. From 1936, Canadian Car & Foundry built the design under licence as the G-23, completing 52 in all. Thirty-four G-23s reached Republican Spain under a Turkish cover story and fought as the GE-23 Delfín; outclassed, they suffered heavy losses, and their one recorded victory was over a Heinkel He 59 floatplane. Eleven Delfíns survived the civil war and flew with the postwar Spanish Air Force, as the R.6, until the last was scrapped in 1954. Canada took 15 embargoed G-23s into the Royal Canadian Air Force as Goblin Mk.Is in the fall of 1940; with No. 118 (Fighter) Squadron they were for a time the only fighters defending the Atlantic coast, and the last were decommissioned in 1942. Single G-23s also went to Japan, for technical evaluation, to Mexico, as a pattern for production that never began, and to Nicaragua.
Afterlife
No U.S.-built FF survives; the family's only remaining example is a Canadian-built G-23, construction number 148. It had served Nicaragua as GN9, was stricken by September 1954 and left in a Managua junkyard. In 1961, crop-spraying pilot J.R. Sirmons bought it for $150 and spent four years restoring it in Nicaragua. He flew it to the United States in 1966; Grumman bought it, restored it more fully as an FF-1, and on 9 June 1967 it was flown to Pensacola and handed over to the Naval Aviation Museum. It remains on display in the museum's South Wing, wearing the markings of FF-1 BuNo 9351 of VF-5B.