Les pilotes japonais étaient terrifiés : ils ne pouvaient ni distancer ni dominer le F4U Corsair
Video from the channel Histoires De Guerre TV about Vought F4U Corsair, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 31:31. Language: French. Video type: Documentary.
What it's about
A French-language documentary on the effect of the Vought F4U Corsair on Japanese naval aviation pilots between 1943 and 1945. It explains how its advantage in speed, climb, dive, armor and firepower made close-in dogfighting pointless. It also recounts how it undermined the confidence of aviators trained in the doctrine of one-on-one duels.
Historical context
In early 1943, Imperial Navy pilots, selected through the Yokaren program and many with combat experience in China, still trusted the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. It was an agile, long-range fighter, but without armor or self-sealing fuel tanks. The Marines' VMF-124 brought the first twelve F4Us to Guadalcanal on 12 February 1943. Two days later it escorted a PB4Y Liberator strike against the airfield at Kahili, on Bougainville. The Corsairs adopted a specific tactic: climb above the Zeros, dive-attack at high speed and regain altitude without entering turning fights.
Highlights
The video compares the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine, with 2,000 hp at takeoff, to the Zero's Nakajima Sakae 21, with 1,130 hp. It also sets the Corsair's six 12.7 mm Browning M2 machine guns against the Japanese fighter's armament. It mentions the armor around the cockpit and the whistling of the oil cooler intakes at the wing root, which gave rise to the nickname "whistling death". It covers Gregory "Pappy" Boyington's VMF-214 over Rabaul and Kenneth Walsh, of VMF-124, the first Corsair ace on 13 May 1943, with 21 victories on the type. It also mentions Robert Hanson, of VMF-215. Among the variants, it describes the F4U-1A, the F4U-1D as a fighter-bomber and the F4U-2 night fighter with APS-4 radar. It includes the testimony of Saburo Sakai. As a tally, it gives 12,571 aircraft produced, 2,140 aerial victories with a ratio of 11.3 to 1, and more than 64,000 missions. It links the loss of veteran pilots and the collapse of Japanese training to the shift toward kamikaze attacks.