Vought F4U Corsair: WWII Powerhouse of the Pacific. The Bent-Wing Beast!

Video from the channel DroneScapes about Vought F4U Corsair, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 57:21. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about the Vought F4U Corsair that covers the origins of the Vought company, the fighter's development, its early problems and its service in World War II and Korea. It combines narration with archival footage, including gun-camera footage from ground-attack missions, and devotes a long segment to the testimony of Charles "Obie" O'Brien, a naval pilot who flew the Corsair in combat in Korea.

Chance Milton Vought, born February 26, 1890, a mechanical engineer, began working with flying machines in 1910; his first aircraft were assembled on the third floor of a former hosiery factory. His seventh design, the VE-7, tested by Army pilots in February 1918, was the first aircraft to take off from the Langley, the US Navy's first aircraft carrier, on October 17, 1922. After failures such as the V-141 and V-143, the V-166, designed in 1936 and unveiled in 1938, entered testing as the XF4U. A fragile landing gear and poor visibility over the long nose made the Navy hesitant about carrier use; the British Navy operated it from its carriers, and by early 1945 many Corsairs were already flying from carriers in the Pacific, while the Marines used it from island airfields with Marston-mat runways.

The inverted gull wings gave the 13-foot propeller enough ground clearance without lengthening the landing gear, and folded over the cockpit. The engine was an air-cooled 18-cylinder double-row radial of 2,804 cubic inches, with a Hamilton Standard propeller. The aircraft measured 41 feet in wingspan and 33 feet in length, with 314 square feet of wing area and between 9,167 and 16,160 pounds in weight. It carried six 0.50-caliber Browning M2 machine guns and eight 5-inch rockets or two 1,000-pound bombs; from the F4U-1C onward, four 20 mm cannon. There were night-fighter versions, such as the F4U-2 with radar on the right wing, a photo-reconnaissance version with a K-21 camera, and the F4U-7 for the French Navy. It is credited with 2,140 kills against 189 losses, 11.3 to 1; VMF-124, the first squadron at Guadalcanal, shot down 68 Japanese aircraft, and Lieutenant Kenneth Walsh became the first F4U ace on May 13, 1943. The Japanese called it "whistling death."

O'Brien first flew in 1937 in a Ford Trimotor, trained at Pensacola on the SNJ and the F6F, and earned his wings in June 1950. He flew the F4U-5 and the F4U-4 and, from the USS Lake Champlain and the USS Boxer, flew 24 missions over Korea, 11 of them close air support. He left his Corsair, number 412, at Port Lyautey and flew it again 59 years later in Ramona, California. He logged over 7,000 hours in 52 types and 735 carrier landings on 20 carriers, and flew the Corsair until he retired in 2013, aged 85.