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Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: Vought F4U-1D Corsair
Image by Chris Devers
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Specifics, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Vought F4U-1D Corsair:
By V-J Day, September two, 1945, Corsair pilots had amassed an 11:1 kill ratio against enemy aircraft. The aircraft’s distinctive inverted gull-wing design permitted ground clearance for the huge, three-bladed Hamilton Regular Hydromatic propeller, which spanned much more than four meters (13 feet). The Pratt and Whitney R-2800 radial engine and Hydromatic propeller was the largest and one particular of the most strong engine-propeller combinations ever flown on a fighter aircraft.
Charles Lindbergh flew bombing missions in a Corsair with Marine Air Group 31 against Japanese strongholds in the Pacific in 1944. This airplane is painted in the colors and markings of the Corsair Sun Setter, a Marine close-assistance fighter assigned to the USS Essex in July 1944.
Transferred from the United States Navy.
Manufacturer:
Vought Aircraft Business
Date:
1940
Country of Origin:
United States of America
Dimensions:
Overall: 460 x 1020cm, 4037kg, 1250cm (15ft 1 1/8in. x 33ft 5 9/16in., 8900lb., 41ft 1/8in.)
Supplies:
All metal with fabric-covered wings behind the main spar.
Physical Description:
R-2800 radial air-cooled engine with 1,850 horsepower, turned a three-blade Hamilton Normal Hydromatic propeller with solid aluminum blades spanning 13 feet 1 inch wing bent gull-shaped on both sides of the fuselage.
Long Description:
On February 1, 1938, the United States Navy Bureau of Aeronautics requested proposals from American aircraft manufacturers for a new carrier-primarily based fighter airplane. During April, the Vought Aircraft Corporation responded with two styles and one of them, powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine, won the competition in June. Significantly less than a year later, Vought test pilot Lyman A. Bullard, Jr., 1st flew the Vought XF4U-1 prototype on Could 29, 1940. At that time, the largest engine driving the greatest propeller ever flown on a fighter aircraft propelled Bullard on this test flight. The R-2800 radial air-cooled engine developed 1,850 horsepower and it turned a 3-blade Hamilton Normal Hydromatic propeller with strong aluminum blades spanning 13 feet 1 inch.
The airplane Bullard flew also had one more striking function, a wing bent gull-shaped on both sides of the fuselage. This arrangement gave further ground clearance for the propeller and lowered drag at the wing-to-fuselage joint. Ironically for a 644-kph (400 mph) airplane, Vought covered the wing with fabric behind the main spar, a practice the organization also followed on the OS2U Kingfisher (see NASM collection).
When naval air strategists had crafted the specifications for the new fighter, the want for speed had overridden all other overall performance goals. With this in thoughts, the Bureau of Aeronautics selected the most strong air-cooled engine offered, the R-2800. Vought assembled a team, lead by chief designer Rex Biesel, to design the very best airframe about this powerful engine. The group included project engineer Frank Albright, aerodynamics engineer Paul Baker, and propulsion engineer James Shoemaker. Biesel and his group succeeded in building a really fast fighter but when they redesigned the prototype for production, they were forced to make an unfortunate compromise.
The Navy requested heavier armament for production Corsairs and Biesel redesigned every outboard folding wing panel to carry three .50 caliber machine guns. These guns displaced fuel tanks installed in each and every wing top edge. To replace this lost capacity, an 897-liter (237 gal) fuselage tank was installed in between the cockpit and the engine. To maintain the speedy and narrow fuselage profile, Biesel could not stack the cockpit on top of the tank, so he moved it almost 3 feet aft. Now the wing fully blocked the pilot’s line of sight throughout the most critical stages of landing. The early Corsair also had a vicious stall, potent torque and propeller effects at slow speed, a quick tail wheel strut, primary gear struts that frequently bounced the airplane at touchdown, and cowl flap actuators that leaked oil onto the windshield. These issues, combined with the lack of cockpit visibility, made the airplane almost not possible to land on the tiny deck of an aircraft carrier. Navy pilots quickly nicknamed the F4U the ‘ensign eliminator’ for its tendency to kill these inexperienced aviators. The Navy refused to clear the F4U for carrier operations until late in 1944, far more than seven years soon after the project started.
This flaw did not deter the Navy from accepting Corsairs because Navy and Marine pilots sorely necessary an improved fighter to replace the Grumman F4F Wildcat (see NASM collection). By New Year’s Eve, 1942, the service owned 178 F4U-1 airplanes. Early in 1943, the Navy decided to divert all Corsairs to land-based United States Marine Corps squadrons and fill Navy carrier-primarily based units with the Grumman F6F Hellcat (see NASM collection). At its ideal speed of 612 kph (380 mph) at six,992 m (23,000 ft), the Hellcat was about 24 kph (15 mph) slower than the Corsair but it was a joy to fly aboard the carrier. The F6F filled in splendidly until improvements to the F4U qualified it for carrier operations. Meanwhile, the Marines on Guadalcanal took their Corsairs into combat and engaged the enemy for the very first time on February 14, 1943, six months just before Hellcat pilots on that battle-scared island initial encountered enemy aircraft.
The F4U had an instant impact on the Pacific air war. Pilots could use the Corsair’s speed and firepower to engage the more maneuverable Japanese airplanes only when the advantage favored the Americans. Unprotected by armor or self-sealing fuel tanks, no Japanese fighter or bomber could withstand for far more than a few seconds the concentrated volley from the six .50 caliber machine guns carried by a Corsair. Key Gregory "Pappy" Boyington assumed command of Marine Corsair squadron VMF-214, nicknamed the ‘Black Sheep’ squadron, on September 7, 1943. Throughout much less than five months of action, Boyington received credit for downing 28 enemy aircraft. Enemy aircraft shot him down on January three, 1944, but he survived the war in a Japanese prison camp.
In Could and June 1944, Charles A. Lindbergh flew Corsair missions with Marine pilots at Green Island and Emirau. On September three, 1944, Lindbergh demonstrated the F4U’s bomb hauling capacity by flying a Corsair from Marine Air Group 31 carrying three bombs each weighing 450 kg (1,000 lb). He dropped this load on enemy positions at Wotje Atoll. On the September eight, Lindbergh dropped the 1st 900-kg (2,000 lb) bomb throughout an attack on the atoll. For the finale 5 days later, the Atlantic flyer delivered a 900-kg (2,000 lb) bomb and two 450-kg (1,000 lb) bombs. Lindbergh went ahead and flew these missions following the commander of MAG-31 informed him that if he was forced down and captured, the Japanese would almost undoubtedly execute him.
As of V-J Day, September two, 1945, the Navy credited Corsair pilots with destroying two,140 enemy aircraft in aerial combat. The Navy and Marines lost 189 F4Us in combat and 1,435 Corsairs in non-combat accidents. Beginning on February 13, 1942, Marine and Navy pilots flew 64,051 operational sorties, 54,470 from runways and 9,581 from carrier decks. Throughout the war, the British Royal Navy accepted two,012 Corsairs and the Royal New Zealand Air Force accepted 364. The demand was so great that the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation and the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation also created the F4U.
Corsairs returned to Navy carrier decks and Marine airfields during the Korean War. On September 10, 1952, Captain Jesse Folmar of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-312 destroyed a MiG-15 in aerial combat over the west coast of Korea. However, F4U pilots did not have several air-to-air encounters over Korea. Their major mission was to help Allied ground units along the battlefront.
Following the Globe War II, civilian pilots adapted the speedy bent-wing bird from Vought to fly in competitive air races. They preferred modified versions of the F2G-1 and -two originally constructed by Goodyear. Corsairs won the prestigious Thompson Trophy twice. In 1952, Vought manufactured 94 F4U-7s for the French Navy, and these aircraft saw action over Indochina but this order marked the finish of Corsair production. In production longer than any other U.S. fighter to see service in Globe War II, Vought, Goodyear, and Brewster constructed a total of 12,582 F4Us.
The United States Navy donated an F4U-1D to the National Air and Space Museum in September 1960. Vought delivered this Corsair, Bureau of Aeronautics serial number 50375, to the Navy on April 26, 1944. By October, pilots of VF-10 have been flying it but in November, the airplane was transferred to VF-89 at Naval Air Station Atlantic City. It remained there as the squadron moved to NAS Oceana and NAS Norfolk. Throughout February 1945, the Navy withdrew the airplane from active service and transferred it to a pool of surplus aircraft stored at Quantico, Virginia. In 1980, NASM craftsmen restored the F4U-1D in the colors and markings of a Corsair named "Sun Setter," a fighter assigned to Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-114 when that unit served aboard the "USS Essex" in July 1944.
• • •
Quoting from Wikipedia | Vought F4U Corsair:
The Likelihood Vought F4U Corsair was a carrier-capable fighter aircraft that saw service mainly in World War II and the Korean War. Demand for the aircraft soon overwhelmed Vought’s manufacturing capability, resulting in production by Goodyear and Brewster: Goodyear-constructed Corsairs were designated FG and Brewster-built aircraft F3A. From the first prototype delivery to the U.S. Navy in 1940, to final delivery in 1953 to the French, 12,571 F4U Corsairs have been manufactured by Vought, in 16 separate models, in the longest production run of any piston-engined fighter in U.S. history (1942–1953).
The Corsair served in the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marines, Fleet Air Arm and the Royal New Zealand Air Force, as properly as the French Navy Aeronavale and other, smaller, air forces until the 1960s. It speedily became the most capable carrier-primarily based fighter-bomber of World War II. Some Japanese pilots regarded it as the most formidable American fighter of Globe War II, and the U.S. Navy counted an 11:1 kill ratio with the F4U Corsair.
F4U-1D (Corsair Mk IV): Built in parallel with the F4U-1C, but was introduced in April 1944. It had the new -8W water-injection engine. This alter gave the aircraft up to 250 hp (190 kW) much more energy, which, in turn, improved functionality. Speed, for instance, was boosted from 417 miles per hour (671 km/h) to 425 miles per hour (684 km/h). Since of the U.S. Navy’s require for fighter-bombers, it had a payload of rockets double the -1A’s, as nicely as twin-rack plumbing for an further belly drop tank. Such modifications necessitated the need for rocket tabs (attached to fully metal-plated underwing surfaces) and bomb pylons to be bolted on the fighter, however, causing extra drag. Additionally, the role of fighter-bombing was a new activity for the Corsair and the wing fuel cells proved as well vulnerable and had been removed.[] The extra fuel carried by the two drop tanks would nevertheless allow the aircraft to fly relatively extended missions in spite of the heavy, un-aerodynamic load. The normal armament of six machine guns had been implemented as effectively. The canopies of most -1Ds had their struts removed along with their metal caps, which were utilised — at a single point — as a measure to avoid the canopies’ glass from cracking as they moved along the fuselage spines of the fighters.[] Also, the clear-view style "Malcolm Hood" canopy utilized initially on Supermarine Spitfire and P-51C Mustang aircraft was adopted as regular gear for the -1D model, and all later F4U production aircraft. Further production was carried out by Goodyear (FG-1D) and Brewster (F3A-1D). In Fleet Air Arm service, the latter was known as the Corsair III, and each had their wingtips clipped by 8" per wing to let storage in the lower hangars of British carriers.