Corsair

[Sisu]

Just a quick question here:

This pretty (considering it's a Corsair) F4U-4 came to the Reno Pylon Racing School in 2009 with this single tank attached, and cruised around for a couple of days looking like this. The airplane flew just fine and came back in September (without the extra fuel tank) and ran fine. So my question is whether this single external tank would have been an authorized loading in service use, and if so what might be the purpose of such an asymmetrical load.

 

[tomo pauk]

One bomb + one tank would not be unheard of - drop the bomb for landing, or drop it against a badly-defended target so the drop tank is not necessarily droped beforehand?
Also, IIRC, there were experiments with one self-sealing and another 'normal' drop tank, whereby the s-s tank would've remained on the A/C during the fight.