F4U Corsair: The Fighter the Navy Rejected That Became a Legend of the Pacific War

Video from the channel Secretos de Reddit about Vought F4U Corsair, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 55:41. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Narrated documentary that traces the history of the Vought F4U Corsair from the early days of Chance Milton Vought's company to the Korean War. Its throughline is the paradox of a fighter designed for carriers that the US Navy kept off them, yet which ended up as one of the most recognizable aircraft of the Pacific War.

Vought, born in 1890 and died in 1930 from an infection, built his first aircraft on Long Island in 1917; a VE-7 was the first aircraft to take off from a US aircraft carrier, the Langley. In 1938 the Navy requested a new carrier-based fighter, and chief engineer Rex Beisel proposed the V-166B, designed around the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, an air-cooled 18-cylinder radial engine. The huge Hamilton Standard propeller forced the inverted gull wing in order to shorten the landing gear. The XF4U prototype flew on May 29, 1940 at Stratford; weeks later, Boone Guyton had to make an emergency landing on a golf course near Norwich. Once repaired, it exceeded 400 miles per hour on a flight with a tailwind. Poor visibility, gear bounce and asymmetric stalling at low speed led in 1942 to its withdrawal from carriers and its transfer to the Marines.

VMF-124 arrived at Guadalcanal in February 1943, and its first mission over Kahili was a failure; the pilots switched to diving attacks and climbing away without engaging in turning fights. Kenneth Walsh, a former mechanic, became the first Corsair ace and received the Medal of Honor. The F4U-1A raised the seat, bulged the canopy, stiffened the shock struts and added a small strip on the right wing to equalize the stall. Tom Blackburn's VF-17 scored more than 150 victories while operating from land. The Fleet Air Arm first took it into carrier combat, from the Victorious, in Operation Tungsten against the Tirpitz in April 1944. Charles Lindbergh, as a civilian, flew missions carrying up to 4,000 pounds of bombs. The kamikaze threat brought it back to carriers, and over Okinawa and Korea it excelled at close support; the video recalls Jesse Brown, Thomas Hudner and Guy Bordelon. 12,571 units were built between 1942 and 1953, and the official figures of 2,140 kills against 189 losses in air-to-air combat are presented as wartime claims.