Posted on 01/24/2009 9:25:30 AM PST by Dysart
DALLAS After four years of painstaking labor, artisans of the Vought Aircraft Retirees Club have restored an icon of U.S. aviation history, a World War II-vintage F4U Corsair fighter plane.
Working with pieces and parts from several wrecked and scrapped aircraft and building many others themselves from drawings, the retirees have spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars re-creating a version of the distinctive, gull-winged plane that Japanese soldiers and sailors dubbed "Whistling Death."
Rebuilding the Corsair, one of two great fighter planes the other was the Grumman F6F Hellcat that enabled Navy and Marine pilots to dominate the skies in the Pacific theater, "has been a real work of love for the last four years," said Hank Merbler, president of the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation.
The recently completed plane, which isnt flyable and will eventually end up in an area museum, will be rolled out for several hundred invited guests today in a hangar at Vought Aircraft Industries west Dallas complex.
Launched in 1938 to meet Navy requirements for a high-speed fighter airplane, the Corsair is the most famous aircraft designed and produced by the company founded by the aviation pioneer Chance Vought.
"Its an airplane Im really proud of. If you read all the history of it, its really something," said Dillon Smith, a 34-year employee of Vought who retired in 1994.
"It did what it was designed to do and that was defeat the Japanese Zero," Smith said.
The first new, highly capable fighter aircraft to reach the Pacific theater early in 1943, the Corsair was initially deployed with ground-based Marine squadrons.
Corsairs were flown by the famous "Black Sheep" Squadron, led by Marine Maj. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, whose exploits were the basis for the mid-1970s television show Baa Baa Black Sheep.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
Love those WW2 fighter planes!
Did they offer flight tours in that one?
I had chance to book a ride in a B-17 a few yrs back in Addison, TX(home of cavanaugh flight museum)...loud,loud plane...when we were taxing down the runway, smoke began pouring from one of the engines just before takeoff. We aborted and all tours were cancelled for that day. I’m still here...
I was a kid during WWII and after the war I remember a Corsair pilot telling my dad that when a Zero got on his tail, he just hunched down behind the torso-shaped thick steel backing and let the plane take the hits as he knew it would. He said he could feel the plane lurch and shudder - took a licking but kept on ticking. When the Zero overflew him, he hosed it with his 50 cals and watched it go up in a ball of flame.
Here are some sounds to go with the pictures.
http://www.100megspopup.com/photo4phood/webaircraft/heartheroar.html
Yup, that's a Turkey alright.That looks more like an Avenger
Agree. That is a TBF-Avenger.
How embarassing - I barely glanced at the photo scanning thru, and didn't take note of the distinctive (and, to Grumman retirees such as me, famous) wing fold mechanism design of Leroy Grumman. And the two-place canopy marks it as a bomber - thus, an Avenger, the only WWII Grumman bomber design I can call to mind (apart from a dive bomber design which was not selected for production by the Navy).I am however aware of no way to tell from a photo whether a particular Avenger is a TBF ("TB" standing for torpedo bomber, and "F" standing for "manufactured by Grumman") as opposed to a TBM (same Grumman design, but manufactured by General Motors Corp). A large number Avengers - and Wildcats as well - were in fact manufactured by GM. Only Grumman, however, produced F6Fs.
The “bent wing” was to provide the extra ground clearance needed by the 13’ propellor, because the landing gear could not be made longer (either because of strength or to fit into the chord of the wing, I don’t know which).
(What looks like intakes for twin turbine engines are in fact cooling intakes for the dual P&W R2000 radial engines.)
My father served in WWII as part of Air Group Fifteen (AG-15) on the USS Essex. AG-15 (the Fabled Fifteen), commanded by David McCampbell the US Navys all-time leading ace, participated in many major Pacific battles including the “Marianas Turkey Shoot”.
My father wasn't a pilot, but still flew over 50 times. His Flight Book shows he flew in a SB2C, SB2C-1C, SB2C-3, SB2C-4, SB2C-4E, SB2C-5, SBW-4E and a TBM-3E.
My puzzle is with a great picture I have of my father with his squadron in front of a plane. Based on its air intake and wings, the plane appears to be an SB2C-Helldiver. I've wanted to get a model of this plane, but every model I find on-line shows four propellers. The plane in the picture only has three propellers.
Do I have the wrong plane?
“Do you know why the wings were shaped that way?”
The F4U incorporated the largest engine available at the time, the 2,000 hp (1,490 kW) 18-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp radial. To extract as much power as possible, a relatively large, 13 ft, 4 inch (4.06 m) Hamilton Standard Hydromatic three-blade propeller was used. To accommodate a folding wing, the designers considered retracting the main landing gear rearward, but for the chord of wing selected, it was difficult to fit undercarriage struts long enough to provide sufficient clearance for the large propeller. Their solution was an inverted gull wing, a similar layout to the one used by Germany’s Stuka dive bomber, considerably shortening the length of the main gear legs. The anhedral of the wing’s center-section also permitted the wing and fuselage to meet at the optimum angle for minimizing drag, without the need for wing root fairings.
“The US didn’t think you could fly Corsairs off of the carriers...”
The Corsair was intended to be a carrier-based aircraft. Initial Corsairs had a “bounce” in their landing gear, causing them to bounce over the deck pendant in carrier landings. That is when the Corsairs went to the Marines for land-based operation. The Brits overcame this problem and used them off carriers. Later we also used them off carriers.
You can see the resemblance but the angle slopes upward closer to the fuselage on this one.
>>I have VB-15 flying from Essex under the command of Lt. Cdr J.H. Mini with -1Cs during the Marianas Campaign, then with -3s at Leyte three/four months later.
Are you saying you served on the Essex?
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