An early Bearcat could bypass the Hellcat in British service

What if the F8F Bearcat had been available early enough for Royal Navy wartime service?

Britain might adopt it instead of the Wildcat and then have little reason to move through the Hellcat as an intermediate fighter.

The Bearcat was attractive enough to disrupt the normal progression of Fleet Air Arm fighters. If it appeared early and Britain received it instead of the Wildcat, its performance could remove the later need to adopt the Hellcat. That would turn the Bearcat from a late-war development into the center of British carrier fighter procurement. The counterfactual depends chiefly on timing, because the historical aircraft sequence already met urgent wartime needs before the Bearcat was available.