F4U Corsair - WW2 US Navy Fighter Plane (2024)

By Stephen Sherman, Apr. 2002. Updated January 23, 2012.

Originally designed as a carrier-basedfighter, the Corsair's difficult handling and landing characteristicscaused the Navy to rely on the Grumman Hellcat instead. The MarineCorps benefited from this policy change, and its land-based unitseagerly adopted the "Bent-wing Bird." The famous Jolly Rogers, theNavy's VF-17, also flew the Corsair during its tour in the Solomons.Late in the war, as the handling problems were resolved, both Marineand Navy pilots operated F4U's from carrier decks.

But its speed, firepower, maneuverability, andruggedness cause manyto rate it with the Mustang as the best fighter plane of World War Two.

TommyBlackburn (CO of the Jolly Rogers) on the F4U Corsair:

The Corsair appeared to be a superb fighting machine,but it was overengineered and thus hard to maintain. At the start of atypical day's ops, only about half of our fullcomplement was safe to fly. By "secure," half of those could beexpected to be "down."

The 2,800-cubic-inch engine was a monster to fire upafter it had sat in subfreezing weather overnight. First, ittook two strong men pulling on a prop blade to slowlyaccomplish the minimum revolutions needed to clear thelower cylinders of oil so the start-up could be accomplished in safety.Next, the engine had to be primed with rawgasoline. This touchy enterprise had to stop short of flooding and thusdrowning the spark plugs and evade the obvious fire hazard whilegetting enough vaporized fuel into thecylinders to get the engine to cough to life. Some geniushad equipped the Corsair with a shotgun starter in lieu ofthe heavy electric starter. When all was in readiness, theshotgun shell was fired. Sometimes it went bang and turnedthe prop through three or more revolutions. Mostly, however, it justwent poof and the prop just twitched. Fourabortive tries generally overheated the starter, and thatresulted in a fifteen-minute stand-down for cooling. So muchfor geniuses.

Each of fourteen cowl flaps had its own baby hydrauliccylinder to open and close it. These tended to leak. Inaddition, until the maintenance crews became expert, thebig radial engine tended to throw a lot of oil. The combination rapidlycoated the windshield and seriously decreasedthe airplane's inherently limited forward visibility. We allbecame expert at quickly locating rain showers throughwhich we could fly in order to wash away the oil.

See Also

Vought F4U Corsair - Price, Specs, Photo Gallery, History - Aero CornerIl caccia americano Chance Vought F4U Corsair“Angels of Okinawa”: The F4U Corsair | The National WWII Museum | New OrleansCorsaro F4U: Morte fischiante

The landing flaps had a protective device to preventextension at airspeeds high enough to cause over-stressing.This was a dandy feature except that the flaps could andoften did retract fully and without warning during the finalstages of a landing approach. Of course, this resulted in ahorrendous loss of lift and a rapid sinking. The pilot, everalert for such mishaps, had to slam on full power to evadedisaster. After too many narrow escapes, we got the "flapblowup" removed, it being our decision to risk tearing off aflap as against losing lift in this terrifying, dangerous manner. To myknowledge, no one ever did tear off a flap.

The Corsair's storage battery, which was located in theco*ckpit, had an unhealthy habit of boiling over. In onecase, a battery exploded while the airplane was in flight.We later determined that it had been excessively over-charged, but the incident gave us one more in a long line ofpotential life-threatening problems to bear in mind while we weretrying to fly - and eventually, fight - our irasible Hogs.

quoted from The Jolly Rogers, by Tom Blackburn and Eric Hammel

Development

Originating in a 1938 Navy spec, when the need to replace the F2A andF4F could already be foreseen, the Vought Corsair was designed aroundan engine that also didn't exist yet: the Pratt & Whitney R-2800Double Wasp, a monster 18 cylinder double radial, eventually capable of2250 horsepower. (During the Corsair's development, corporatereorganizations brought the Vought company into Vought-Sikorsky andthen Chance Vought, all part of United Aircraft, along with Pratt &Whitney and Hamilton Standard.)

The huge engine dictated much of the plane's design. Such apower plant needed a comparably big propeller to absorb all thathorsepower. Thus the 13' 4" diameter Hamilton Standard prop, thelargest fittest to a fighter at that time. The Corsair's fuselage hadto be high in the air, to give the prop clearance, But ordinary,straight wings at that height would have implied long (and weak)landing gear. The distinctive bent wings were developed to permit areasonably short undercarriage.

The XF4U first flew in May 1940, and in October flew faster than 400MPH, a record for a production fighter. A major re-design pushed theco*ckpit back 32 inches, which resulted in poor forward vision for thepilot, at least on take-off and landing. Development continued into1942, when Vought delivered the first production F4U-1 to the Navy,which didn't like what it saw, especially when compared to theeasier-handling, and very capable F6F Hellcat. The F4U had dangerousstall behavior, had tendency to yaw suddenly when landing, and, worstoff all, bounced when it hit the deck. For use on carriers, theseproblems caused the Navy to insist that they be fixed, while it wentahead equipping with the Hellcat. By the summer of 1943, most of theMarine fighting squadrons had transitioned to the F4U-1, the firstoperational model.Based on combat experience, Vought improved the next version, the F4U-1A:

• a better visibility bubble-top canopy. The different canopy topsshow clearly in the illustrations.
• a more powerful engine, the R-2800-8W. Equipped withwater-injection, this engine could achieve 2,250 horsepower for briefperiods.
• a spoiler on outside edge of right wing
• a longer tailwheel leg

This list of changes is typical for the modifications made in WWIIaircraft, as the manufacturers absorbed the lessons of the battlefieldand adapted the airplanes in response.

The F4U Corsair went on through many different models. It sawservice in Korea, where Guy Bordelonflew an F4U-5N to become the Navy's only prop ace of that war. TheCorsair remained in production until 1952 (over 12,000 built), theyserved with many nations' air forces until the 1960's. Corsairs flewtheir last combat misions in the 1969 "Soccer War" between Honduras andEl Salvador.

F2G

Quinn Elliot made these observations on the F2G variant:

Perhaps I missed it on the Corsair page - the most powerful Corsairever built, the Goodyear built F2G with the Pratt & Whitney R-4360corncob 28 cylinder engine (four rows of seven cylinders), contrastingwith the P & W R-2800 18 cylinder engine in the normal Corsair.Fifteen of these were built, five being the F2G-1 beginning with bureaunumber 88454. These five were land lubbers, although the wings could befolded manually. The remaining 10 were fully carrierized and wereF2G-2's.

I took photos of BuNo 88454 about 1970. It had been preserved at NASNorfolk and stored by O & R/NARF. It was in beautifulcondition-until a ranking Naval Officer wangled it away from the Navy,for racing, or so the story went. That plan went afoul, and it wound upderelict at Newport News. (As I recall Corsair F2G-1 88454 is/was inthe Champlain Fighter Museum in Mesa, Arizona. Cook Cleland raced thesesuper Corsairs in the late 1940's?)

F2G-2 specifications which should be about the same as the F2G-1=399MPH at sea level, 431 mph at 16,405 feet, initial climb rate 4,400 feetper minute, internal fuel range 1,190 miles, empty weight 10,249pounds, gross weight 13,346 pounds, span 41 feet, length, 33 feet 9inches, height 16 feet 1 inch, wing area 314 sq. ft. The max speedperformance was very close at sea level, but at altitude quite adifference. The Super Corsair had a bubble type canopy, differentcowling to cover the longer engine, thus it had a longer snout. It hadsmaller wing root inlets than the standard Corsair. Since it wasn'tequipped with a supercharger, intercoolers weren't necessary. The F2G'scame with a taller fin and rudder, with a straight section auxiliaryrudder just below the normal rudder, which moved only to the right by12 plus degrees-as an aid for torque correction whilst landing onaircraft carriers.

Check out the story behind PappyBoyington's Corsair.

Recommended Reading (available from Amazon.com): CorsairAces of World War 2

Osprey's CorsairAces is another book that I've worn out, with its chapters on the Black Sheep and British Corsairs especially engrossing. As always, Mark Styling's color profiles do not disappoint.

Corsair Variants