The Insane Engineering of the Vought F4U Corsair
Video from the channel JE Documentary about Vought F4U Corsair, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 36:16. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.
What it's about
Documentary about the engineering of the Vought F4U Corsair: the US Navy's requirements, the inverted gull wing, the engine, the materials, the aerodynamics, the landing gear, the armament and the evolution of performance across its variants.
Historical context
In February 1938 the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics requested a fighter with the highest attainable speed, a stall speed under 70 mph for carrier landing, a range of at least 1,000 miles and four guns. Chief engineer Rex Beisel's team chose the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, an 18-cylinder twin-row radial producing 1,850 hp at takeoff and requiring a three-blade propeller about 13 feet across. The inverted gull wing allowed a shorter landing gear and a perpendicular join with the fuselage that reduced drag without fairings; the wing root housed the oil coolers and air intakes in the leading edge. Early tests revealed oil on the windscreen, gear bounce and low-speed stalls, which were fixed with changes to the dampers, anti-bounce cylinders and a small stall strip on the right wing's leading edge.
Key facts
In 1940 it exceeded 400 mph in level flight, the first American single-engine fighter to do so. It was the first Navy aircraft with the landing gear retracting into fully enclosed wells, the wheels rotating 90° as they retracted. It was built with spot-welded aluminum panels and was the last American fighter with fabric covering on part of the wings and control surfaces. Water injection on the F4U-1A and F4U-1D raised emergency power to 2,250 hp. The F4U-1 carried six .50 caliber Browning M2 machine guns, with 400 rounds in each of the four inner guns and 375 in the two outer ones, 150 pounds of armor and a 1.5-inch armored windscreen; the F4U-1C carried four 20 mm cannon. According to the video, the F4U-1 had a ceiling of 36,200 feet and climbed to 10,000 feet in 3.65 minutes, was tested in the Langley Laboratory wind tunnels and in the Pacific recorded 2,140 kills against 189 losses.