F4U Corsair vs P-51 Mustang

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GrauGeist said:
Now might be a good time to point out that Vought, Goodyear and Brewster all produced a total of 12,571 F4U types.

Not sure how that figure listed for accidents exceeds the total number of aircraft built...
Click to expand...
The USAAF lost 47,462 aircraft in training accidents in USA, no idea what the Navy losses were.
 
Hmmmmm, I don't believe the USAAF was trying to take-off or land on carriers.
I guess it is a wonder that any F4Us managed to last long enough to shoot down any Japanese aircraft.

I think "ensign eliminator" has a much better ring to it (the alliteration) than "2nd lieutenant eliminator" would for an Army plane.
Although "Butter Bar Butcher" might work

"2nd Looie slayer"?
 
Eric 'Winkle' Brown is well known for his disdain for the Corsair, having flown Corsair Mk.I JT118 for diving trials with the Royal Aircraft Establishment and also an AU-1 postwar. His thoughts are not complimentary, and it is worth reading what he thought of the landing procedure. From Wings of The Navy:

"All in all, I was most anxious to discover for myself if the Corsair was the deck-landing dog that it was reputed to be. It was! In the deck-landing configuration with approach power, the Corsair could demonstrate a very nasty incipient torque stall with dangerously little warning, the starboard wing usually dropping sharply. With the large flaps fully extended the descent rate was rapid, and a simulated deck landing at 80 knots gave very poor view and sluggish aileronand elevator control. A curved approach was very necessary if the pilot was to have any chance of seeing the carrier, let alone the batsman! When the throttle was cut, the nose dropped so that the aircraft bounced on its mainwheels, and once the tailwheel made contact, the aircraft proved very unstable directionally, despite the tailwheel lock, swining either to port or starboard,and this swing had to be checked immediately with the brakes.

"On one approach, I tried a baulked landing and discovered that the sudden opening of the throttle at 80 kts also produced the previously mentioned torque stall, but this time the port wing dropped. I needed no more convincing of the wisdom of the US Navy in withholding the Corsair from shipboard operation! Oh yes, the Corsair could be landed on a deck without undue difficulty by an experienced pilot in ideal conditions, but with pilots of average capability, really pitching decks and marginal weather conditions, attrition simply had to be of serious proportions."
 
michael rauls said:
12,571 built and 15,000 lost in accidents. You've got to admit that is quite a high accident rate
Click to expand...
Right?

So more Corsair's (USN, USMC, RN, FAA, etc.) were lost to accidents than ever were produced.

This might explain why the FAA Corsair that was captured by the Germans in Norway was never documented by photograph - it was sucked into the vacuum created by the negative numbers...
 

Nah, the Army had other ways of expressing the same idea - "One a day in Tampa Bay" for example (though I like the looie slayer idea )
 

Did not say that..!
You twisted the words !
Why?
 
It wasn't 15,000 aircraft lost, it was 15,000 aircrew killed...Sobering Stats: 15,000 U.S. Airmen Killed in Training in WW II | RealClearHistory

"Yet the fact that 15,000 young men died in aircrew training in the U.S. is virtually unknown. Aviation was still in its infancy during the 1930s. Only a tiny fraction of Americans had ever been on a plane. Even civil aviation was far from safe, military aviation even less so. In 1930, the accident rate for military aviation was 144 accidents per 100,000 flying hours. By 1940, the rate had been reduced to 51 accidents per 100,000 hours, a reduction of more than two thirds. But even this improved rate would be considered intolerably unsafe today."
 

Thanks Fubar for the link.
Saw this statistic a long while back.
Could not remember if it was lost aircraft or pilots.

Wonder if this statistic was similar for the other combatants.
Except Russia, bet they were worse than all the other combatants combined.

Reading my copy of Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the 20th Century -General Editor: Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev...
Has everything from number of hand guns made, shells, cannon, ships, airplanes..everything.
Nothing about training losses.
 
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