| One addition; Bearcats were still in active USN sdns at the start of the Korean War, just weren't ever deployed there. Most F8F units in the period were in the Altantic fleet. But the Navy had decided in the late 40's to concentrate on the F4U (F4U-4 particularly) as its main prop fighter; USN air groups included prop fighters in addition to jets until after Korea. Those props carried out a secondary role of long endurance CAP (much more endurance than early jets) and ground attack, of course.
Then also before the Korean War the US had viewed the 1st Indochina War ('45-54) as mainly French colonlialism and insisted anything transferred to France not be used there. After the KW started the attitude changed to viewing it mainly as another front against Communist expansion. So, F8F's flowed out of the USN to the French during the KW period, and were used extensively late in the 1st Indochina war, for example the Dienbienphu campaign.
Looking at the stats of F4U and F8F we often assume the F4U was preferred because of its performance (like load capability), and that may be true, but standardizing on the most numerous plane seems to have been the main driver: there were lots of F4U-4's compared to F8F's, or 'straight' F4U-5's, which were never used by the Navy in Korea either, (F4U-5N's and F4U-5P's were used by the Navy in Korea, and F4U-5's used briefly by one Marine sdn in Korea).
Some USN F4U sdns deployed to Korea had converted from F8F's.
Joe | 
Linear Mode
