Question: Which aircraft did ace pilot Gordon Arthur Stanley fly from aircraft carriers during World War II?

Aircraft carriers have their origins during the days of World War I.  The earliest experiments consisted of fitting temporary "flying off" platforms to the gun turrets of the warships of several nations, notably the United States and the United Kingdom.  The first ship to be modified with a permanent flight deck was the battlecruiser HMS "Furious" , which initially had a single flying-off deck forward of the original superstructure.  Subsequently, she was modified with a separate "landing on" deck aft and later with a full flush deck.  Other ships, often liners, were modified to have full flush flight decks, HMS "Argus" being the first to have such modification begun.  Those first faltering steps gave little indication of just how important the aircraft carrier was to prove to be.  During the inter-war years (between the World Wars), Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States built up significant carrier fleets so that by the beginning of World War II, they had 18 carriers between them.  The 1940 Battle of Taranto and the 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor in retrospect showed the world that the aircraft carrier was to be the most important ship in the modern fleet.  Today, aircraft carriers are the capital ships of the navies they serve in, and in the case of modern US "supercarriers", they embark an airgroup that is effectively a small air force. <SEP> The "Zuihō" class (瑞鳳型 ) was a group of two aircraft carriers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy before World War II.  Both ships were originally built as submarine tenders, but were subsequently converted into carriers.  Completed in early 1942, "Shōhō" supported the invasion forces in Operation MO, the invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, and was sunk by American carrier aircraft on her first combat operation during the Battle of the Coral Sea on 7 May.  "Shōhō" was the first Japanese aircraft carrier to be sunk during World War II.  "Zuihō" played a secondary role in the Battle of Midway in mid-1942 and did not engage any American aircraft or ships during the battle.  The ship participated in the Guadalcanal Campaign during the rest of 1942.  She was lightly damaged during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during this campaign and covered the evacuation of Japanese forces from the island in early 1943 after repairs. <SEP> Gordon Arthur Stanley was a World War II fighter pilot who achieved ace status in the Pacific Theatre flying Grumman F6F Hellcats, credited with eight victories.  As a U.S. Naval Reserve Officer, he was killed in an accident on 19 April 1956 while flying a Grumman F9F-6 Cougar of Naval Aviation Reserve Training Unit (NARTU), Naval Air Station Glenview, Illinois. <SEP> The Grumman F6F Hellcat is an American carrier-based fighter aircraft of World War II.  Designed to replace the earlier F4F Wildcat and to counter the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero, it was the United States Navy's dominant fighter in the second half of the Pacific War.  The Hellcat competed with the faster Vought F4U Corsair for that role and prevailed, as the Corsair had significant issues with carrier landings.  The Corsair instead was primarily deployed to great effect in land-based use by the U.S. Marine Corps.