A7 Corsair
- Episode aired Jul 31, 2009
YOUR RATING
Photos
Paul Moga
- Self - Host
- (as Paul 'Max' Moga)
Storyline
Featured review
Inverted Gull Wings.
I hope I'm entering this review into the right slot. IMDb lists it as "Great Planes: A7 Corsair" but the only Corsair that the Great Planes series appears to have produced deals not with the A7 which went operational in 1967 but with the F4U of World War II vintage. Both airplanes were produced by Vought and had the same name.
The F4U was arguably the finest propeller-driven fighter on the Allied side. It was the first single-engine American fighter to break 400 miles per hour in level flight. It was first driven by a Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engine of 1800 horsepower, about as powerful as they could get at the time. Vought simply built the smallest airframe they could around the huge radial engine. To maximize performance, a 13-foot Hamilton Standard Propeller was used. It was a monster. (The Me-109 used a propeller just under 10 feet.) Early models were difficult to handle but bit by bit improvements were made until it became a reliable and stable platform.
It was originally designed to be operated from an aircraft carrier but the US Navy decided it was unsuitable for precise landings and take offs, so they handed it over to the Marines for land-based use. It proved highly successful both as a fighter and in the ground attack role. It continued in use as an attack airplane through the Korean war, and the last Corsair was produced in 1953.
The Navy's chief objections to the F4U was that its landing gear couldn't withstand the stress of carrier operations, visibility on the approach was too limited, and the cockpit was too small and too far back on the fuselage. The British were also deploying the F4U. They'd been pioneers in naval aviation and they eased the problems considerably by stiffening the landing gear, developing a sort of side-slip approach to carrier landings, and by raising the cockpit 18 centimeters (7.1 inches) to improve the pilot's forward view, and a bulged canopy, along the lines of the "Malcolm Hood" used on Spitfires, replaced the original "birdcage" framed canopy to provide better all-round field of view.
Problems solved, the Navy began using Corsairs on aircraft carriers in 1944. They were more difficult to handle than the contemporary Grumman F6F Hellcat but they were wildly successful. Nobody would accuse it of being a pretty airplane. In front of the cockpit the fuselage was one long cylinder. A combination of long landing gear accommodated in an inverted gull wing was necessary to keep the extra-long propeller from chopping up the deck. But the F4U and the P-51 were probably the best fighter aircraft that the US produced during the war.
The F4U was arguably the finest propeller-driven fighter on the Allied side. It was the first single-engine American fighter to break 400 miles per hour in level flight. It was first driven by a Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp engine of 1800 horsepower, about as powerful as they could get at the time. Vought simply built the smallest airframe they could around the huge radial engine. To maximize performance, a 13-foot Hamilton Standard Propeller was used. It was a monster. (The Me-109 used a propeller just under 10 feet.) Early models were difficult to handle but bit by bit improvements were made until it became a reliable and stable platform.
It was originally designed to be operated from an aircraft carrier but the US Navy decided it was unsuitable for precise landings and take offs, so they handed it over to the Marines for land-based use. It proved highly successful both as a fighter and in the ground attack role. It continued in use as an attack airplane through the Korean war, and the last Corsair was produced in 1953.
The Navy's chief objections to the F4U was that its landing gear couldn't withstand the stress of carrier operations, visibility on the approach was too limited, and the cockpit was too small and too far back on the fuselage. The British were also deploying the F4U. They'd been pioneers in naval aviation and they eased the problems considerably by stiffening the landing gear, developing a sort of side-slip approach to carrier landings, and by raising the cockpit 18 centimeters (7.1 inches) to improve the pilot's forward view, and a bulged canopy, along the lines of the "Malcolm Hood" used on Spitfires, replaced the original "birdcage" framed canopy to provide better all-round field of view.
Problems solved, the Navy began using Corsairs on aircraft carriers in 1944. They were more difficult to handle than the contemporary Grumman F6F Hellcat but they were wildly successful. Nobody would accuse it of being a pretty airplane. In front of the cockpit the fuselage was one long cylinder. A combination of long landing gear accommodated in an inverted gull wing was necessary to keep the extra-long propeller from chopping up the deck. But the F4U and the P-51 were probably the best fighter aircraft that the US produced during the war.
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- rmax304823
- Dec 1, 2015
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