Curtiss-Wright: Loss of Don Berlin and downfall

Or maybe not, Since it was designed as a carrier plane to begin with. The handling problems might have been easier to sort out or ignore in a land based fighter but I am not sure how much those held up initial production.

Making it lighter means redesigning (redoing the stress calculations) for the parts involved in carrier landings. Not just the tail hook and attachment points but the landing gear and attachment areas of the wing taking the higher vertical impact velocities. Goodyear made something like 1000 Corsairs without not only tail hooks but with fixed wings for the Marine Corp. they may not have lightened up much of anything however. No details seem to have surfaced about any difference in performance.

Since it started as a carrier plane, throwing out thousands of man hours in engineering work and redoing the wing/landing gear,etc was not likely to speed up things.

From Wikipedia, which is always suspect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_F4U_Corsair
After mock-up inspection in February 1939, construction of the XF4U-1 powered by an XR-2800-4 prototype of the Pratt Whitney Double Wasp twin-row, 18-cylinder radial engine, rated at 1,805 hp (1,346 kW) went ahead quickly, as the very first airframe ever to have a Double Wasp engine fitted for flight.
First flight 29 May 1940

Despite the above, the F4U initial development seems a bit protracted.

Shortround6 said:

Or maybe not, Since it was designed as a carrier plane to begin with. The handling problems might have been easier to sort out or ignore in a land based fighter but I am not sure how much those held up initial production.

Making it lighter means redesigning (redoing the stress calculations) for the parts involved in carrier landings. Not just the tail hook and attachment points but the landing gear and attachment areas of the wing taking the higher vertical impact velocities. Goodyear made something like 1000 Corsairs without not only tail hooks but with fixed wings for the Marine Corp. they may not have lightened up much of anything however. No details seem to have surfaced about any difference in performance.

Since it started as a carrier plane, throwing out thousands of man hours in engineering work and redoing the wing/landing gear,etc was not likely to speed up things.

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Just a fanciful thought, if the F4U was originally designed to Army stress limits, wonder how it would have performed.

Just as a matter of accuracy gjs, the Corsair was not developed by United Aircraft. It was developed by Chance-Vought. By the time the plans were drawn up, it was Vought-Sikorsky. It still today is not part of United Aircraft.

It started out as Lewis and Vought Aircraft, then Chance-Vought, then Vought-Sikorsky, then LTV aerospace (LTV meaning Ling-Temco-Vought), then Vought Aircraft Companies. Today it is Vought AIrcraft Industries.

From: vought heritage

"On July 1, 1954 the Vought Division separated from United Aircraft and became an independent corporation, Chance Vought Aircraft Inc., with C. J. McCarthy as Chairman of the Board and Fred Detweiler as president."

But saying United Aircraft developed the Corsair is like saying General Motors developed the Corvette.

and to put construction into perspective; "During the decade the Corporation developed more than forty airplane designs of which 777 were produced from 1930 through 1939 and 1,327 were produced in the 1940's for a total of 2,104 airplanes."

Decade being 1930-1940. The "forty" designs may very well include small variations or different models. Like XOS2U-1 OS2U-1 OS2U-2 OS2U-3

Once they decided to go for six .50 cal guns (398Lbs) with close to 400rpg(702lbs) , the 361 gallons of fuel and the R-2800 two stage engine you were going to wind up with a big airplane. A few hundred pounds out of a 12,000lb airplane isn't going to change performance a whole lot. Heck, leaving 100 rounds of ammo for every .50 cal gun would save about 180lbs.

All I can say is the original planes we have are Vought-Silorsky. They are for an F4U-1.

Nothing in the documentation mentions United AIrcraft. The only companies represented by the documents are Chance-Vought and Vought-Sikorsky.

However, I see in checking that Unitied Aircraft WAS in there.

Mea cupla.

Shortround6 said:

Making it lighter means redesigning (redoing the stress calculations) for the parts involved in carrier landings. Not just the tail hook and attachment points but the landing gear and attachment areas of the wing taking the higher vertical impact velocities. Goodyear made something like 1000 Corsairs without not only tail hooks but with fixed wings for the Marine Corp. they may not have lightened up much of anything however. No details seem to have surfaced about any difference in performance.

Since it started as a carrier plane, throwing out thousands of man hours in engineering work and redoing the wing/landing gear,etc was not likely to speed up things.

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I'd more meant changes that involved mostly omitting Navy-specific components and shifting around some of the remaining (non-structural) parts to address for CoG changes if needed.

Granted, that would have made more sense had it not been designed with wing folding from the start, more like the F2A or F4F-3.

Two rather curious features on the Corsair are two tabs on the elevators and some models with a split rudder. The elevators had both a trim tab and a servo tab right next to one another. The Goodyear R-4360-powered Corsairs had a split rudder and the lower, small rudder was connected to the flaps. Interesting features on a fighter of the time.

GregP said:

Two rather curious features on the Corsair are two tabs on the levators and some models with a split rudder. The elevators had both a trim tab and a servo tab right next to one another. The Goodyear R-4360-powered Corsairs had a split rudder and the lower, small rudder was connected to the flaps. Interesting features on a fighter of the time.

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Don't forget the ailerons too, definitely an interesting feature for the time and helpful in improving roll rate, especially at high speeds.

The P-38 could have used servo ('boost') tabs on its ailerons, at least prior to the hydraulically boosted models. (ironically it was tested with servo tabs on the elevator, but those just proved to overstress the airframe in critial mach dives -much like using the trim tab too aggressively for emergency recovery)

GregP said:

Two rather curious features on the Corsair are two tabs on the elevators and some models with a split rudder. The elevators had both a trim tab and a servo tab right next to one another. The Goodyear R-4360-powered Corsairs had a split rudder and the lower, small rudder was connected to the flaps. Interesting features on a fighter of the time.

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This kind of advanced control rigging is what was incorporated into aircraft years latter, often could be done economically in fly By Wire.

What was the idea of the rudder to flap cross coupling? I presume that when the rudder was deflected not only would it produce yaw but a roll in the opposite direction that was counteracted by the flap opposite to the rudder deflection. Either that or the intention was to allow rudder turns with properly co ordinated banks.

Who does the control rigging for your museum?

The R-4360 made a ridiculous amount of torque and the flap-rudder coupling was installed to ensure the pilot had sufficient rudder travel when flying at approach speed at approach power. With the coupling the rudder behaved much more like an R-2800-powered Corsair. The R-4360 very effectively discouraged abrupt power changes at pattern speeds as the aircraft would torque-roll with ease. But if you flew the engine (and aircraft) smoothly, it behaved and was predictable.

GregP said:

The R-4360 made a ridiculous amount of torque and the flap-rudder coupling was installed to ensure the pilot had sufficient rudder travel when flying at approach speed at approach power. With the coupling the rudder behaved much more like an R-2800-powered Corsair. The R-4360 very effectively discouraged abrupt power changes at pattern speeds as the aircraft would torque-roll with ease. But if you flew the engine (and aircraft) smoothly, it behaved and was predictable.

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As I recall the bad outcome examples were a missed arresting cable situation. Trickling rather than pouring the coals must take a bit of discipline. The successful go-arounds tend not to be shown much.

Not sure why, but go arounds, or bolters, really don't seem to be shown much. You CAN find videos of them since the Navy saves everything, but they tend to want to focus on hitting the numbner two wire. The thinking seems to be, "if you hit the two wire and the hook bounces over it, you stop on the number 3 or 4 wire or go around. If you don't hit the two wire, work on your approach skills until you DO hit the two wire normally."

Most of the accident videos I have watched have concentrated on unusual situations such as having the hook slip off the wire while still under go-around power or some other aircraft malfunction. They like to show the ones where the pilot miraculously survives.

A bit off topic, but with all the discussion of the F4U in a Curtiss-related thread it makes me wonder: might it have been more worthwhile for Curtiss to take up development of a land-based Corsair derivative for the USAAF rather than invest so much into the XP-60 program? Somewhat in line with the earlier suggestion of a land-only F4U derivative possibly being a bit faster to service than the F4U-1 was.

Seems like it might have resulted in a better product for Curtiss.

But that WAS back in the day when attitudes and actions were WAY different from what they are today.. Suppose Curtiss had, somehow, drammatically improved the Corsair. How willing would Vought have been to cut in changes made by a competitor? Allison's stand on backfire screens was that they weren't needed once you learned how to start an Allison ... and they weren't. The OBVIOUS soluton would have been to fit backfire screens to engines on stands and then teach the pilots and crew cheifs to start them correctly ... but they never even did THAT.

Makes me wonder about the problem-solving ability of the society back then.

But then I remember all the stuff that was discovered or created and I KNOW they could solve VERY difficult problems. But it wasn't a mutual benefit type of thing. It was "solve it for OUR company and everyone else can suck wind." And, given the conditions of the time, that was probably best at the time. Seemed to work out in the end.

I recall that Brewster never made "improvements" to the Corsair and Goodyear did, so the problem-solving and design ability of Goodyear were pretty good. Nobody else came up with an R-4360-powered Corsair that was actually lighter than some R-2800-powered models when at operational weights.

I am at all sure where the great delay in the F4U comes from. The Navy ordered the production model in quantity in the summer of 1941. it went into service in the late winter of 1942/43. The Army ordered 700 P-47s off the drawing board in the fall of 1940. roughly 9 months before the production order for the Corsair. The P-47 went into combat service after the F4U.
Not sure where any major change in performance is going to come from, 5-8mph from leaving of the tail hook? Or 2-3mh? The hook boom retracted behind doors and their was only a small notch in the bottom of the fuselage were the actual hook was. Deleting it would certainly aid maintenance but isn't going to affect speed much at all. just about everything else is changing the weight/thickness of structural components. A LOT of engineering work to save how many pounds?
AS for Curtiss. They were fooling around with more different aircraft programs, by far, than any other US aircraft maker. Did they have any spare engineers to fool around with the Corsair?
Would you want them to? See Curtiss SB2C. Not exactly a quick program. See the Seamew. See Curtiss production of the P-47.

Curtiss had plenty of resources if they had been assigned to make the Corsair and NOT build P-40s. It's a matter of resource trade-off. I don't know that they could have done anything different, but any significant leap in performance wiould come with airframe or powerplant changes, or maybe anohter propeller, or a combination.

The F4U-1 started out at about 417 mph top speed but the F4U-4 could hit 446 mph. The F4U-1 had an initial climb rate of 3,250 fpm and the F4U-4 had an initial climb rate of 4,170 fpm.

So Vought found some performance gains in the airframe. Curtiss might have found more .. or not, had they been concentrating on it. Can't say ... it's a "what-if."

GregP said:

I recall that Brewster never made "improvements" to the Corsair and Goodyear did, so the problem-solving and design ability of Goodyear were pretty good. Nobody else came up with an R-4360-powered Corsair that was actually lighter than some R-2800-powered models when at operational weights.

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Had Brewster engineers attempted such, I doubt it would have gone over well given their consistent problems seemed to be more on the manufacturing end or a combination of that and miscommunication between the engineering and manufacturing divisions of the company (or ... poor management and communication all around). I'd imagine 'improvements' could be made specific to compromises that might allow better ability to achieve reasonable quality output in spite of manufacturing infrastructure issues but THAT would require engineers that understood the detailed problems/limitations involved (specific to Brewster manufacturing) ... so again, not really happening.

It really seems like Brewster might have been best off with most manufacturing farmed out to second sources (Government controlled or otherwise) and focus what resources they did have on addressing at least some of the management issues and maintaining/improving engineering and R&D abilities with less emphasis on expanding in-house production output. (quality control and volume production scaling problems on the manufacturing end seem to be most of what killed the F2A as an effective military aircraft ... thinking that would /improve/ with something like the Corsair seems close to insane)

GregP said:

Curtiss had plenty of resources if they had been assigned to make the Corsair and NOT build P-40s. It's a matter of resource trade-off. I don't know that they could have done anything different, but any significant leap in performance wiould come with airframe or powerplant changes, or maybe anohter propeller, or a combination.

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You really wouldn't want to compromise initial P-40 production ... at very least not the Tomohawk. The period where the XP-46 was being considered along with the parallel development of the P-40D would seem like more when possible modification, testing, and tooling for F4U production might begin.

Even if we assume Curtiss could get a derivative of the F4U airframe into production fairly quickly, there's still the issue of engine availability (compared to the P-40's V-1710 at the same time). Resorting to single-stage R-2800s or even R-2600s might have been practical to some extent or at least for still producing a fighter (and potential fighter-bomber) superior to the P-40 itself. (especially for export orders where application of inferior powerplants was more typical) Not sure if Curtiss's connection to Wright would create any bias for using the R-2600 either.

The F4U-1 started out at about 417 mph top speed but the F4U-4 could hit 446 mph. The F4U-1 had an initial climb rate of 3,250 fpm and the F4U-4 had an initial climb rate of 4,170 fpm.

So Vought found some performance gains in the airframe. Curtiss might have found more .. or not, had they been concentrating on it. Can't say ... it's a "what-if."

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It wouldn't even need to be a 'better' Corsair either, just a similar one or possibly a simplified one if anything (perhaps adapted to better optimize for Curtiss manufacturing) but something still significantly more potent than what Curtiss had been producing otherwise.

I believe part of the performance increase in the -4 was due to a new engine. Curtis could pound on the sheet metal all they wanted. Until P&W builds the "C" series -18 engine with 100-150 more hp military power (let alone wep) at most altitudes I wouldn't expect a big performance jump.

Curtiss could have built P-51's, forget about P-47's.