Japanese Pilots Were Terrified: The F4U Corsair They Couldn't Outrun, Outdive or Outgun

Video from the channel WW2 Air Stories about Vought F4U Corsair, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 46:12. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Narrated documentary on how the F4U Corsair shifted the air balance in the Pacific between 1943 and 1945. The story is told through marines Kenneth Walsh, Gregory "Pappy" Boyington and Robert Hanson, and Japanese ace Tetsuzo Iwamoto.

In 1942 the A6M Zero dominated the Wildcat and P-40 thanks to its light weight and turning ability. In 1938 the Navy had requested a new fighter. The Chance Vought team, led by Rex Beisel, paired the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine, rated at about 2,000 hp, with a 13-foot-4-inch propeller, and bent the wings into an inverted gull shape to keep the landing gear short. On 1 October 1940 the XF4U-1 prototype became the first American fighter to exceed 400 mph in level flight. Trials aboard the USS Sangamon in September 1942 revealed poor visibility, bouncing and asymmetric stalls, and the Navy handed it over to the marines. VMF-124 arrived at Guadalcanal on 12 February 1943 and suffered the "Valentine's Day massacre" over Kahili two days later. Drawing on the study of the captured Akutan Zero, pilots adopted the high-speed diving attack. Walsh became the first Corsair ace and received the Medal of Honor for his combats on 15 and 30 August 1943. Boyington formed VMF-214, the "Black Sheep," led sweeps over Rabaul and was shot down on 3 January 1944 after matching the record of 26 victories. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. Hanson, of VMF-215, scored 20 victories in 17 days and died on 3 February 1944. On 20 February the Japanese fighters left Rabaul for Truk.

The British Fleet Air Arm solved the carrier-landing problem with a curved approach. In April 1944 its Corsairs escorted the attack on the Tirpitz from HMS Victorious. After the kamikazes appeared, VMF-124 and VMF-213 embarked on the USS Essex in late 1944, and in 1945 the Corsair fought at Okinawa, where Walsh scored his 21st victory. Official figures credit it with 2,140 kills against 189 combat losses, a ratio of about 11 to 1. More than 12,000 were built, and it was the American piston-engined fighter of the war that stayed in production the longest. Iwamoto survived and died in 1955, aged 38.