Chance Vought F-4U-4 Corsair USMC VMF

Item#: MPCVF4U4CUSMC

MSRP Price: $299.95

Factory Direct Price: $199.95

Vought's Chief designer Rex B. Beisel instead opted for a fuselage of circular cross-section, of a diameter matching that of the R-2800. The oil cooler and supercharger air intakes would be installed in the wing leading edges. He also avoided the hump-backed upper fuselage of the Grumman F4F and F6F, that was designed to give the pilot a better forward visibility over the engine. Hence, the forward fuselage was of cylindrical shape. Construction was all-metal, and streamlining was improved further by using a new spot-welding technique that gave a very smooth finish.

A very large propeller was required to convert the power of the R-2800 into forward thrust. A three-bladed propeller with a diameter of 4.04m was chosen. Sufficient propeller clearance could have been achieved by designing a long and stalky landing gear, or by making the fuselage deeper again, thus moving the wing downwards relative to the engine. Instead, the Vought team adopted an inverted gull wing: the wing started with strong anhedral, i.e. a downwards slope toward the wingtips, and then curved upwards to strong dihedral. The landing gear was installed at the lowest point of the bend. Such a construction was not uncommon, though usually associated with fixed landing gear, such as on the German Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber. Inevitably, the weight of such a construction is higher than that of a straight wing. But apart from keeping the landing gear short and simple, it offered the advantage that the joint between wing and fuselage was made at the ideal angle. In that way a wing root fairing could be avoided. The entire construction contributed to the purposeful ugliness of the design, but it was efficient.

The wing had integral leading edge fuel tanks, which were unprotected. For storage aboard carriers, the wing folded upward outboard of the main landing gear legs. The wheels folded backwards, turning through 90 degrees while retracting, so that they were stored flat within the wing. The entire trailing edge inboard of the ailerons was provided with flaps. The outer wing panels were covered with fabric aft of the wing spar.

The pilot sat in a large cockpit over the wing trailing edge. The view straight forward over the engine cowling was poor, even more so than common in single-seat fighters of the day. View too the sides was reasonable, although the cockpit canopy was heavily framed. No concessions were made to rearward view, the aft of the cockpit being faired into a gently sloping fuselage decking. The tailplanes and fins had rounded tips, and the control surfaces were fabric covered.Armament consisted of one .50 gun in each wing, and a .50 and a .30 in the engine cowl decking. There was also room for 20 small anti-aircraft bombs, stored in the wings.

During the Pacific war, the strategy of "island hopping" turned islands into forward operating bases for the aircraft of the US Marine Corps, the US Navy and the Army Air Force. Essential to this strategy was that no attempt was made to conquer all Japanese strongholds in the Pacific. Instead, they were neutralized by attacks, cut off from the main Japanese forces, and left behind.The islands from which the advanced units operated were often very small. If they were larger, they were often covered with a dense jungle, and only a small part of the island was used by the combatants. The climate was often unhealthy, both for people and aircraft, and standards of living were primitive. Missions often involved long over water flights. The island group of the Eastern Solomons, for example, extends over more than 1000km.

The first USMC unit to equip with the F4U was VMF-124, which was declared operational on 28 December 1942. VMF-124 was quickly deployed to Guadalcanal, where it flew its first combat mission, also the first of the F4U, on 11 February 1943. Fighting over Guadalcanal was intense. The first air-to-air combat took place on the 14th, when a mixed force of P-38s, P-40s, PB4Ys and F4Us lost ten aircraft to the Japanese, and claimed four A6M "Zero" fighters.As on this first mission, the aircraft involved in an operation were often of different types, belonged to different services, and belonged to different bases. The coordination between them was not always what it should have been.

Within six months, all USMC units in the Pacific were equipped with the F4U. The production was extremely rapid, and by August 1934 a thousand aircraft had been delivered. Final production of the F4U-1 was 5559, including the 2010 FG-1s built by Goodyear and 735 F3A-1s built by Brewster.

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