Thursday, June 24, 2010

F4U Corsair takeoff

Dirtcrashr comments that his Dad was Navy in the Pacific theater, and wasn't feeling the propeller love. Got to fix that, with a Corsair fighter unfolding its wings and taking off.



The Corsair was manufactured for a longer time than any propeller driven naval airplane, from 1940 to 1953. Two design features were obvious even to a casual observer. British Aircraft Carriers were smaller than American ones, and the British hanger deck ceiling wasn't as high. To make sure that the planes fit with their wings folded, 8" was cut off the end of the wings, giving them a pronounced "clipped" effect. But the inverse gull wing design was its most obvious feature.

The Corsair used the same huge engine as the P-47, which needed a very large propeller to get maximum efficiency. This meant that the landing gear had to be longer than normal, but that meant that they were too long to retract to the rear - and that was needed because the wings had to fold for storage on the Carrier. The solution was the inverse gull wing design, where the portion of the wing closest to the fuselage was much lower; that meant shorter landing gear which could retract backwards.

The Navy liked its F6F Hellcats better, as their pilots said they were easier to land. But the Marines took to the Corsair like ducks to water. It was fast and tough, and could carry a lot of ground attack ordnance, and it continued in its ground attack role in the Korean War even when air superiority fighters had all been replaced with jets.

Ted Williams flew Corsairs in World War II, teaching new Marine pilots combat flying.

Corsairs continued in service in the French Navy until 1964, and last saw combat in 1969 (!) in the "Football War" between Honduras and El Salvador. That's 27 years of combat sorties, which has to be some sort of record for a propeller fighter.

7 comments:

Old NFO said...

Yep, they are beautiful airplanes!

wolfwalker said...

They flew in simulated combat for even longer ... "Baa Baa Black Sheep" wrapped its last episode in what -- 1978?

Also worth noting is that the last versions of the Corsair used what might just be the most powerful radial engine ever put in a single-seat aircraft, the P&W R-2800 Double Wasp, rated at 2400hp.

Anonymous said...

I heard somewhere that takeoff power for these was 3400 RPM and 104 inches of boost.

Jim

WoFat said...

ZOOM!

NotClauswitz said...

Thanks!! I always figured the gull-wing was mainly a prop issue - they didn't need gear except for takeoff, they could belly-land the thing! :-)
My dad trained to be a radioman in an Avenger. In that position you have to fit into a narrow little trough to do your work. He was rowing Crew at Annapolis and his shoulders got too big to fit in there, so they washed him out and sent him on a cruise to Panama - then they dropped the Bomb and the war was over.

Atom Smasher said...

Yeah, I've always thought the gull wing was the result of the huge prop and everything else flowed from that.

bluesun said...

Corsair is my favorite WWII Warbird Fighter. I especially like the story of Robert Klingman (scroll down a ways, and there's a picture!), who chopped the tail off of a Japanese fighter with his huge prop.