F4U Corsair takeoff

Dirtcrashr comments that his Dad was Navy in the Pacific theater, and wasn't feeling the propeller love. Got to fix that, with a Corsair fighter unfolding its wings and taking off.



The Corsair was manufactured for a longer time than any propeller driven naval airplane, from 1940 to 1953. Two design features were obvious even to a casual observer. British Aircraft Carriers were smaller than American ones, and the British hanger deck ceiling wasn't as high. To make sure that the planes fit with their wings folded, 8" was cut off the end of the wings, giving them a pronounced "clipped" effect. But the inverse gull wing design was its most obvious feature.

The Corsair used the same huge engine as the P-47, which needed a very large propeller to get maximum efficiency. This meant that the landing gear had to be longer than normal, but that meant that they were too long to retract to the rear - and that was needed because the wings had to fold for storage on the Carrier. The solution was the inverse gull wing design, where the portion of the wing closest to the fuselage was much lower; that meant shorter landing gear which could retract backwards.

The Navy liked its F6F Hellcats better, as their pilots said they were easier to land. But the Marines took to the Corsair like ducks to water. It was fast and tough, and could carry a lot of ground attack ordnance, and it continued in its ground attack role in the Korean War even when air superiority fighters had all been replaced with jets.

Ted Williams flew Corsairs in World War II, teaching new Marine pilots combat flying.

Corsairs continued in service in the French Navy until 1964, and last saw combat in 1969 (!) in the "Football War" between Honduras and El Salvador. That's 27 years of combat sorties, which has to be some sort of record for a propeller fighter.