The F4U Corsair

From failure to greatness

The Vought F4U Corsair was one of the best U.S. warplanes of World War II. It’s also the embodiment of an ages-old story: that of the protagonist overcoming a weakness to achieve success. Originally designed as a carrier-based fighter, the Corsair was long-prevented from serving in that role due to several design flaws; persistence, however, allowed it to become an excellent fighter and fighter-bomber in another context, and the ninth most highly produced fighter of the war with 12,571 Corsairs built (some after the war, admittedly).

The Corsair’s life began in February 1938, when the Chance Vought corporation submitted a design for a single-engine naval plane to the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. It was the first plane to be designed specifically for the powerful, still-experimental Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine, and it was a sleek, fast, thoroughly modern plane. An unusually large three-bladed propeller with a diameter of 13 feet 4 inches (4.06 m) was mounted on the plane’s nose to take advantage of the engine’s 2,000 horsepower performance. (Four-bladed propellers were introduced with the F4U-U4, the last model built during the war.) The aluminum fuselage panels were spot welded in place, avoiding the use of rivets and improving aerodynamic qualities thanks to a smoother skin. (At the same time, it was the last American plane to use a fabric skin for some of its parts.) The first version of the plane became the first single-engine American fighter to exceed the average ground speed of 400 mph (652 km/h), and later models could achieve a maximum speed of 446 mph (717 km/h).

The plane’s most distinctive visual feature, the inverted gull wing, was the necessary result of a design compromise. The large propeller blades meant that the plane’s nose had to be high up, otherwise the blades would have hit the ground. A high nose, however, would have necessitated long landing gear struts, which would have been structurally weak and unstable (the famous German Messerschmitt had long struts and suffered for it through numerous take-off accidents). (Read our earlier article) The inverted gull wing gave the nose sufficient ground clearance while the landing gears, located near the lowest point of the wings, could be mounted on short struts.

In some ways, it was the very power of the Corsair that caused its greatest problems, as the engine’s massive torque made it hard to land on the short runways of aircraft carriers. If a pilot slowed down on final approach and then suddenly sped up (say, during an aborted landing), the torque from the sudden acceleration could make the left wing dip down so hard that the entire plane flipped over. Additionally, the cockpit was placed far back, behind the wings and a very long nose, which greatly limited the pilot’s visibility during landing. (Also, the cockpit was so far behind the wings that pilots found it difficult to climb in.)

Another problem was that the hydraulic engine cowl flaps often splattered the windscreen with oil, making landings even harder. While the Corsair was rather heavy (carrier planes tended to be, since more weight allowed them to sink faster and not overshoot the deck), it still had the tendency to “float” for a while before coming down; and when it did, the landing gear struts often made it bounce, which was definitely an unwanted quality for a carrier-based plane. These drawbacks made the plane unpopular with less experienced pilots and earned it unflattering nicknames such as “hose nose” (for its long nose), “bent-wing widow maker” and “ensign eliminator.” These problems were eventually fixed, largely thanks to input from the British, but the plane was only deployed on U.S. carriers in late 1944. The Navy found the Corsair hard to work with, and decided to go with the Grumman F6F Hellcat, which had worse combat performance, but was much easier to land on a deck.

The Corsair was promptly handed down to the U.S Marine Corps, and the ugly duckling became a beautiful swan. Marine aviators usually flew from ground bases in the Pacific, where the long runways mooted the Corsair’s deck landing problems, and the plane quickly proved itself an excellent combatant. It was the first American plane that enjoyed a clear advantage over the Mitsubishi A6M Zero – the Zero was more maneuverable and had a better climb rate and low speeds, but the Corsair was just plain better at higher velocities, and Marine pilots eventually developed tactics to bring superior speed to bear.

The Goodyear company built a prototype and 10 more copies of a “Super Corsair,” officially the Goodyear F2G Corsair, whose 3,000 horsepower engines were 50% stronger than the original. These were initially intended to intercept Japanese kamikaze planes, but various deficiencies (and the end of the war) meant they never saw combat service, though some were used for aerial racing.

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