hull, float, and undercarriage designs. Like the F4F Wildcat, its narrow-tracked landing gear was hand-cranked. Operational history The J2F was used by the U.S. Navy, Marines, Army Air Forces, and Coast Guard. Apart from general utility and light transport duties, its missions included mapping, scouting/observation, anti-submarine patrol, air-sea rescue work, photographic surveys, reconnaissance, and target tug. J2Fs of the utility squadron of US Patrol Wing 10 were destroyed at Mariveles Naval Section Base, Philippines, by a Japanese air raid on 5 January 1942. The only Duck to survive the attack had a dead engine but had been concealed at Cabcaben airfield during the Battle of Bataan, to be repaired afterwards with a cylinder removed from a destroyed J2F-4 submerged in Manila Bay. Following repairs the J2F-4 departed after midnight on 9 April 1942, overloaded with five passengers and the pilot, becoming the last aircraft to depart Bataan before the surrender of the Bataan to the Japanese only hours later. Among its passengers was Carlos P. Romulo (diplomat, politician, soldier, journalist, and author), who recounted the flight in his 1942 best-selling book I Saw the Fall of the Philippines (Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York 1943, pp. 288–303), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence. Variants J2F-1 Initial production version with 750 hp R-1820-20 engines, 29 built. J2F-2 United States Marine Corps version with nose and dorsal guns and underwing bomb racks, 21 built. J2F-2A As J2F-2 with minor changes for use in the United States Virgin Islands, nine built. J2F-3 J2F-2 but powered by an 850 hp R-1820-26 engine, 20 built. J2F-4 J2F-2 but powered by an 850 hp R-1820-30 engine and fitted with target towing equipment, 32 built. J2F-5 J2F-2 but powered by a 1,050 hp R-1820-54 engine, 144 built. J2F-6 Columbia Aircraft built version of the J2F-5 with a 1,050 hp R-1820-64 engine in a long-chord cowling, fitted with underwing bomb racks and provision for target towing gear; 330 built. OA-12 Air-sea rescue conversion for the United States Army Air Forces (and later United States Air Force, OA-12A). Operators Argentine Naval Aviation received four new-build Grumman G-15s (equivalent to J2F-4s) in 1939, to supplement the eight Grumman G-20s (export version of the Grumman JF-2) received in 1937. In 1946–1947, 32 ex-US Navy Ducks (consisting of one J2F-4, 24 J2F-5s, and 7 J2F-6s) were acquired, with the last examples remaining in use until 1958.