Vought F4U Corsair: the bent-wing carrier fighter

The Vought F4U Corsair is a single-seat, single-engine fighter built by Chance Vought, with wartime production also carried out under contract by Goodyear and Brewster. It flew carrier- and land-based combat for the US Navy and Marine Corps in the Second World War and the Korean War¹, and its distinctive inverted gull wings, adopted to keep the propeller clear of the ground while allowing shorter landing gear, gave it the nickname “bent-wing bird.”

Design and development

The Corsair was built around the largest engine then available, and first flew on 29 May 1940. Its inverted gull-wing shape let Vought’s engineers fit a very large propeller close to the ground while still giving the wheels enough clearance, a solution to the problem of combining a powerful engine with a usable undercarriage on a carrier fighter. Early carrier trials exposed handling problems, including poor visibility over the long nose and a tendency to bounce on landing, and the type reached squadron service with the Marine Corps on land bases before the Navy cleared it for carrier operations¹. Vought and the Navy worked through several production variants to fix these faults and to keep pace with more powerful engines, extending the type’s service life well beyond the war it was designed for.

Specifications

The production F4U-4, the variant covered by its detail specification, was 10.26 m long with a wingspan of 12.5 m and a maximum take-off weight of 6,592 kg. It carried one pilot and was powered by one Pratt & Whitney R-2800-18W Double Wasp radial engine rated at 2,380 hp. Its cruise speed was 346 km/h, and its normal range was about 1,618 km, with a combat radius of roughly 528 km¹ when loaded for a strike mission.

Variants

Vought built the Corsair through a long line of production models as engines and armament improved, and Goodyear and Brewster built further batches under contract to meet wartime demand. Output ran to more than 12,571 aircraft between 1942 and 1953¹, one of the longest production runs of any piston-engined fighter, reflecting both its wartime demand and its continued usefulness as a ground-attack aircraft after 1945.

Operators and service

The Corsair served first with the US Marine Corps and Navy in the Pacific, where its speed and heavy armament made it a capable match for Japanese fighters once early handling problems were resolved, and land-based Marine squadrons flew it from island airstrips in close support and air-superiority roles. The US Navy and Marine Corps also flew it through the Korean War, mainly in the ground-attack role. Beyond the United States, other air arms operated the type during and after the Second World War, and its military career ran unusually long: the US military retired it in 1953, while Honduras flew the type in combat as late as 1979¹, among the last operational uses of a piston-engined fighter in combat.

Similar aircraft

• North American P-51 Mustang: the US Army Air Forces’ main long-range escort fighter of the same war, powered by a liquid-cooled engine rather than the Corsair’s radial.
• Republic P-47 Thunderbolt: another large, radial-engined US fighter of the era, built in greater numbers and used mainly for ground attack and escort.
• Grumman F6F Hellcat: the US Navy’s other main carrier fighter of the Pacific war, built in larger numbers and credited with most US Navy air-to-air victories.
• Mitsubishi A6M Zero: the Imperial Japanese Navy’s principal carrier fighter and the Corsair’s most frequent opponent over the Pacific.