Best naval fighter

[Archer]

just remember its FACT that Great Britain helped to design the Corsair as Vought-Sikorsky had alot of trouble with early designs - as i've explained before the Corsair pilots kept crashing their aircraft because they complained they couldn't see where they were landing over the planes very long nose so the Fleet Air Arm got involved and solved the US Navys problems for them

Could you list some of the problems please? The reason I'm asking is that most of the major problems I've ever heard about related to the design of the Corsair were fixed largely by VF-17 and other US squadrons with Vought representatives.

Grumman who help out on the landing gear problem which the problem is "bounce" landing which I was told that Grumman did help out a little bit.

According to Corsair: The F4U in World War II and Korea by Barrett Tillman and Vought F4U Corsair by Martin W. Bowman, as well as everything else I've ever seen regarding the bounce on landing, have said it was fixed by VF-17's personnel.

Oh BTW, To all you P-38 Lighting, P-47 Thunderbolt, P-51 Mustang, F6F Hellcat and F8F Bearcat people, just remember: The Corsair was the first aircraft to reach speeds over 400 miles per hour.

Again with Corsair: The F4U in World War II and Korea as my source, "Since 1940 the claim has been made that the Corsair was the first American fighter to exceed the magical 400 mph mark in level flight. This was not strictly accurate. The Army Air Corps' Lockheed P-38 Lightning is the legitimate holder of that title. The Corsair was the first U.S. single engine fighter to break the 400 mph barrier."

Also, I don't know squat about the F8F other than it was really good. Since it was planned to replace F6Fs and F4Us as the carrier-borne fighter in the USN I would assume it was superior to the Corsair. But since it never saw action in WWII, it doesn't really matter since we're talking about WWII

[Rafe35]

F8F "Bearcat" was superior any USN in WWII, but the bad news that WWII was finally over after Japanese surrender and F8F was on the way to WWII. I have learn that Grumman F8F Bearcat was alot faster than Goodyear F2G Super Corsair and F2G was suppose to be close as 500+ mph, but failure during suffered from lateral control problems. US Navy order 418+ F2G Super Corsair, but since the WWII was over and they cancel the order. Production of the F2G ended after eight prototypes, five F2G-1s and five F2G-2s were completed.

[Hot Space]

The only thing the Brits did were find a way to cure the Corsair's bounce and come up with a safe Landing Approach - Nothing more.

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[the lancaster kicks ass]

ah! but if we didn't do that, the whole plane would be useless

[Hot Space]

Just a Lump of Metal

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[Rafe35]

True, Brit has save our butt

[cheddar cheese]

yup, and although i hate to admit it, the US has soved ours a couple of times too

[Hot Space]

Too many to mention here

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[Viper]

ah! but if we didn't do that, the whole plane would be useless

not true at all,what about squads like black sheep????,they were very sucsesful

[Viper]

that is what the corsair is remebered for,people like greg boyington brought the plane into the light

[Rafe35]

HARD QUESTION EASILY ANSWERED BY THE PROPER AUTHORITY

"I have been asked many times why the British Royal Navy was able to carrier-qualify in its 2,102 Corsair one year earlier than the American Navy. Many articles on carrier aviation have also asked this question, so I decide to call the WW II Royal Navy's most decorated test pilot, Capt. Eric Brown, for the answer. I have known him since 1947 when he served as an exchange pilot and acted as my Panther chase pilot at NATC Patuxent River, Maryland. I called him on July 23, 2003, and put the question to him.
His answer: 'We were a bit desperate at the time our new carrier being launched faster than we were able to equip them. (For perspective, he related that the Royal Navy had 83 carriers deployed at the War's end!) The Corsairs gave us a bit of a hard time, and we soon understood exactly why the American had so much trouble with them. One problem was the bad view over the nose. Also, if one got slow on approach and added full power to go around again, one could induce an uncontrollable torque roll. Because of the (Corsair's) small stabilizing vertical-fin area (one-third the size of Hellcat's) and high power, the aircraft would then ya, roll, stall and spin into the water. It also, had a most non-resilient landing gear that would bounce the beast over the barrier into the parked aircraft pack on the foredeck.
"Its redeeming factor was its high kill rate-second only to the Hellcat's, but the high accident rate cost a lot of Allied pilots their lives. The Royal Navy had a lot of trash in its Seafire and Sea Hurricane aircraft because neither was disnged from the ground up for carrier operations."
Questions answered: because of its great need for carrier fighters, the British Royal Navy accepted the Corsair's abysmal accident losses.

QUESTION:

Why did it take so long to the Corsair's carrier landing bounce and torque-roll stall accident problems?
Had Vought requested that the Navy load them a Hellcat's well known, non-bounce, landing gear shock strut and use its design to solve that landing-gear problem, it could have been eliminated within a month. Had Vought increased the Corsair's roll-stabilizing vertical fin area by three times (to at least make it equal to the Hellcat's) the torque-roll stall would have been eliminated. I checkeda 1952 F4U-5 Pilots' Handbook that stated clearly on page 29. "At the stall with POWER ON, FLAPS DOWN, a roll off to the left is violent and is accompanied by 600- to 900- foot loss in altitude. "At this late date in the Corsair's long history, torque roll still caused too many accidents when a pilot added power during a landing-signal officer's wave-off on a poor carrier-landing approach!
Answer: when I posed this question to two Vought WW II test pilots, they immediately replied that Vought's enginnering boss simply didn't want to hear that anything was wrong with the Corsair, even from Navy-trained test pilots. Bob Hall, test pilot and VP of engineering. Bud Gilles, test pilot and VP of Flight Operations and the Service Department and President Boy Grumman (who flew Hellcat throughout WW II) had open-door policy to all Grumman test pilots.

Flight Journal Speaical Issue F4U Corsair

[Archer]

The only thing the Brits did were find a way to cure the Corsair's bounce and come up with a safe Landing Approach - Nothing more.

A safe landing approach - yes, but my point was how the Brits helped design the Corsair, this is just operating procedure
The bounce was partially resolved when the Brits chopped 8 inches off each wing. The cut was so the Corsairs could fit in the hangars and reducing the bounce was a byproduct.
From Corsair: F4U in World War II and Korea" by Barrett Tillman:
"The engineering officer, Lieutenant M. W. "Butch" Davenport, worked with Vought representatives in solving the landing gear oleo problem. Experimentation with the oil level and air pressure in the gear strut eventually found the right combination. It was a relatively easy procedure to correct the rigid oleos as they arrived from the factory. With a softer oleo piston stroke owing to greater air pressure, the jolt and consequent landing bounce was alleviated." And Davenport was the engineering officer of VF-17. Davenport also did early testing and design of the spoiling device on the right wing to lessen the wing drop when a Corsair stalled.

"Apparently the Fleet Air Arm never entertained serious reservations about the Corsair as a carrier aircraft. Almost from the beginning, modifications were made with the specific aim of qualifying the new fighters for embarked operations. These included the oleo strut and starboard wing spoiler mods which became standard on all American Corsairs."

[kiwimac]

Funny how often its the little things like the pressure in an oleo strut that can be the downfall of a good airplane.

Kiwimac

[the lancaster kicks ass]

that's fasinating stuff

[Hot Space]

An interesting and excellent Post, Rafe 35

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