Wildcat Thing, I Think I Love You

A few days ago we showed you the cover art for the Czech language editions of six Wing Commander novels. One thing that's always particularly interesting to think about is what the cover of any given Wing Commander novel is showing… and these are no exception! Case in point: the Czech version of Action Stations shows a wing of Raptor-like fighters with some kind of space station complex and/or group of ships in the background. We've run the numbers and we think there's only one scene this could be: a squadron of Wildcats from the Concordia (including young Geoffrey Tolwyn and Vance Richards) leading the counterattack against the Kilrathi at McAuliffe or perhaps defending the Concordia. The main station may be Alexandria and the surrounding ships (if they are separate objects) would be Terran and Kilrathi warships engaged in the battle.

What is a Wildcat? Action Stations gives us a brief look at the Terran Confederation two decades before Wing Commander I. One thing it includes is a totally different lineup of starfighters, the prior generation of ships flown by human and Kilrathi fighters. The two main human fighters are the Wildcat space interceptor and the Hurricane surface-to-space fighter escort. The relationship between the two ships is based on that of the Spitfire and the Hurricane during World War II. The Hurricane is the old reliable fighter that pilots swear by and the Wildcat is the top of the line, most modern type. There isn't really an action scene with the Hurricane, though, seeming to rule it out as a possibility here. The idea that the ships might resemble the Raptor also seems appropriate given the Raptor's appearance in another prequel scenario, the background story of the Enyo Engagement (and there's a further tie-in there as a young Tolwyn flew the Wildcat at McAuliffe and then the Raptor at Enyo five years later.)

Wildcat History

The Wildcat is a Terran Confederation carrier-based space interceptor that entered service in 2604 with the Terran Confederation Navy. Wildcats were designed to serve for twenty-five years but remained the Confederation's front line interceptor when the Terran-Kilrathi War began. The spacecraft cost fifty million credits. In 2630, the fleet board requested funding for a ten million dollar upgrade to replace outdated engines and repair increasingly common stress flaws which had been responsible for an increasing number of accidents (roughly one in three pre-war Wildcat pilots were killed in accidents if they flew for five years). Political machinations blocked the upgrade program and delayed the Wildcat's intended replacement until 2639 (a crash program after the war's start would ultimately introduce the Corsair to serve as a stopgap).

The Wildcat served extensively during the Pilgrim War and in the first days of the Terran-Kilrathi conflict. At the time of the McAuliffe Ambush, Wildcat squadrons were considered the most prestigious in the fleet with pilots requiring advanced training and five hundred hours of flight time in the spacecraft before being assigned to combat units. The first dogfight between human and Kilrathi carrier planes was fought at McAuliffe between Wildcats and their Kilrathi equivalent Kala-class fighters. Like the Kala, the Wildcat's primary armament consisted of two laser cannons and two mass driver cannons (though the ability to maintain full guns had not yet been developed). The Wildcat carried seven missiles including one dumb-fire and six with locking mechanisms. Despite its age, the Wildcat had a slight edge over the Kala in terms of speed and its shields and armor could sustain significantly greater damage.

Noted Wildcat pilots include Major Tanaka "Go-Devil" Shun, father of Lieutenant Colonel Tanaka "Spirit" Mariko, Lieutenant Vance Richards, who would go on to serve as the navy's spymaster and an admiral in three navies and Ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn. Tolwyn had not yet begun his advanced training to fly the Wildcat when the fighting at McAuliffe overtook him. Nevertheless, he volunteered to join Richards' Green Squadron aboard the TCS Concordia when the fighting broke out. In his first mission he shot down an enemy fighter, scored a partial kill on a bomber and intercepted a torpedo in space before it could hit Concordia. He suffered extensive injuries during the battle and an ensuing crash during landing but recovered from surgery and burn treatment in time to join Green Squadron for their part in the Confederation's counterattack. During that second sortie he shot down an enemy bomber and scored five hits on landing craft, destroying at least one. He also shot down a Kala flown by Prince Ratha nar Kiranka who, unknown to Towlyn, subsequently committed Zu'kara over the defeat. Tolwyn was awarded the Pewter Planet and the Medal of Honor for his heroics, kickstarting his rapid rise.

Fan Lore

Prior to this though, a cool piece of fan lore was the idea that the Wildcat might look just like the Hellcat V introduced in Wing Commander III. This thought was based on two things. The first is that the real world Wildcat and Hellcat also look extremely similar and seem to have a similar story with the Wildcat as the most advanced American carrier plane at the start of the war that found itself well countered by the Japanese Zero and the Hellcat as the newly designed replacement capable of outflying the enemy.

Adding to this idea, the jump between the F-90 Hellcat and the F-104 Bearcat also seems to intentionally mirror the late war jump from Grumman's F6F Hellcat to the more advanced and aerodynamic F8F Bearcat.

The other half of this theory relies on something really neat: the presence of the Hellcat on Wing Commander Academy. Since it's never identified on screen, fans have long theorized that the simulated fighters and the gate guardian seen in "Red and Blue" were not Hellcats but their predecessor the Wildcat. It especially seemed to fit that the gate guardian would be an older design rather than a top-of-the-line one. Additionally, the F-90 designation is seemingly far ahead of the F-44 Rapier II we know was introduced the same year we see Academy's Hellcats.

A gate guardian is typically a military vehicle (usually an airplane) that has been decommissioned and put on display at the entrance to a base. They are usually mounted on a pylon or similar display so they appear to be flying.

The Academy Hellcat

We do now know the intent behind the Hellcat on Wing Commander Academy and why it came to appear only in the first episode: it was designed and animated for an earlier iteration of the show! The ship WAS intended to be a Hellcat… but that's because the original plan for the show was that it would be a sort of 'Wing Commander 3 babies' that ignored older continuity in favor of simply adapting the Wing Commander III setting. Characters like Maya, Grunt, Payback and Archer were then intended to be Rachel, Vaquero, Cobra and Flint (you can find the series bible which details much of this here.

The plan to instead use Wing Commander I & II ship designs and original characters came about very late in the process after model sheets (the things animators base what they draw on) for the different ships were already created and some animation tests had already been produced. The change had several impacts on the show including the appearance of some later ships in early cameos; there are similar blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearances from the Avenger, Longbow and Arrow during the series' first few episodes.

This additional work also delayed other needed model sheets, especially those for capital ships. That's why the show uses a Kilrathi dreadnought-inspired design for everything from transports to blockade runners to destroyers and carriers. You can also tell that specific episodes that needed ships but didn't have sheets ready actually used the line art in Claw Marks. This is especially apparent when we see the Dorkir in "The Last One Left" and a Fralthi in "Expendable" (the same ship changes into a Ralari the next week).

Keeping the simulated Hellcats at the start of the show is also a nod to the show's namesake, Wing Commander Academy the game. Academy makes a pretty big deal about how the Academy's training simulator lets pilots fly and fight the NEXT generation of fighters that aren't actually in service yet, the F-97 Wraith and the Kilrathi Jrathek.