The Myth of the British "Fixing" The Corsair

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SaparotRob said:
Though frequently mentioned, what exactly is "sea level"? A Wildcat diving away from a Zero at sea level seems counter productive. So, is sea level a statistical starting point (that no one actually routinely operated at) or an altitude range?
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Well, operations around a carrier are at sea level especially (obviously) take off and landing but also any dive bomb and torpedo attacks. I think generally it is from base level of the sea up to an altitude where the thinning of the air affects engine output or aerodynamics. Anyone from Bristol in UK will tell you the sea isnt actually level, it goes up and down by around 14 meters.
 

It's why a lot of bolt action rifles have a hold open feature where the floor plate will stop the bolt from closing after the last cartridge is fired. In the stress of combat a soldier might just keep cycling and dry firing his gun after it's empty.
 
GrauGeist said:
I had to give the laugh thingy, no offense intended - I am deaf because of that sh*t.
And if you ever want to feel the word of God in your face/eardrums/sternum, try an 8mm Mauser rifle.
It'll make an M1 Garand feel like plinking with a .22 rifle.
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I have a Yugo battlefield pickup K98. Never thought it kicked that bad. At least compared to a mosin nagant. But I also reload for it with lighter bullets.

The Schmidt Rubin G11 is my all time favorite though
 
Not to mention that it takes far fewer seconds to slam another clip into battery, than some clown sprinting your way
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
I've read it in many places both online and in print. In fact, you'll find the claim touted here often enough to be an occasional bone of contention.
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Have you got a source? I'd prefer one in print, if possible.

I'm open to any new information but I'd like to see some back up in a reasonably credible source (even though the claim is hardly credible).

As I said, if anyone had course to say it, it would have been Brown but from my reading, he didn't.
 
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When I was 14 (1957) I walked into wood shop class and found the teacher, head on his desk, surrounded by kids. He said, "Nothing to worry about, Just a little Malaria."
That, of course, meant the south pacific to me. At a brief moment, I asked, just like a dumb kid, "How many Japanese did you kill?"
"Just one that I know of for sure. I slid down a ravine away from the others. Just then a Japanese soldier slid down the other side, and while he was fumbling with his bolt, I flipped off the safety and shot him."
 
J.D. said:
Have you got a source? I'd prefer one in print, if possible.
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No book handy, unfortunately. I donated most of my books when I returned home to Texas 12 years ago.

Online:

If I recall the US Navy was initially not thrilled with the Corsair. Pilots simply found it too hard to see over the nose on approach to the carrier. It was the British who pioneered the curving approach path that allowed the pilot to see the carrier off to their left for the entire approach and straighten out at the last second to catch the wire.


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/WWIIplanes/comments/weazpp/fleet_air_arm_corsair_landing_on_aircraft_carrier/The Davy Ray who wrote the following lists himself as an author:

Given the availability of the F6F Hellcat the US Navy just gave up on the Corsair as a carrier plane and relegated it to the Marines as a land based craft for which it performed admirably. The Japanese nicknamed it 'Whistling death'.

Enter the British who would contribute several innovations to carrier design including the angled flight deck. They figured out that you could do what private pilots call a short field approach by coming upon the stern at an angle before grabbing the arrester wires. That way the pilot never lost sight of the deck.

How was the Royal Navy able to solve the F4U Corsair’s carrier issues faster than the US Navy?

Answer (1 of 8): The biggest problem of the F4U was the long snout housing that big Pratt & Whitney radial engine and the length of the propellers associated with it. The long prop length is the reason for the gull wings. One simply could not see the deck of the carrier on a straight in approach....
www.quora.com


The Fleet Air Arm had been operating 'long nosed' aircraft, with inline engines rather than radials, for decades. They had developed a curved landing approach for use with the Supermarine Seafire which was, fairly, easy to adapt for the Corsair.

Unlike the USN no 'outside the box' thinking was required.

[ibid]

... and so on ...
 
Okay but I'm still unclear about this.

I could find nothing about Davy Ray, much less any serious background information. Reliable source? I'll keep an open mind... for the moment. But anyone talking about the 'whistling death' claim is probably not that serious or reliable.

Brown goes into some detail about the measures used by the RN to tame the Corsair. It should be pointed out though that Brown says British standards were lower than those for the USN, in terms of what was and was not considered acceptable flight behaviour. The British Corsairs were slightly modified for RN carrier hangars, with clipped wings to reduce height when folded.

Brown talks about the problems they experienced with arrestor wires because the Corsair, being so much bigger, heavier and faster, had so much more kinetic energy than anything they had previously experienced. In the early days, they were breaking arrestor wires after only three or four traps so they started using a heavier gauge wire. The result was that it pulled the arrestor hook and the tailwheel clean off. Scratch that and start again.

The problem was eventually resolved but he's not really clear how. That said, it should be remembered that Brown's writings were totally focused on the Royal Navy practices and by no means was he telling the USN/USMC how to operate their aircraft from carriers. It's therefore possible that these remarks have been misinterpreted by later authors as 'fixing the Corsair'. In fact, all they were doing was developing their own workarounds for an aircraft that was difficult to operate from a carrier deck.

I can see nowhere - thus far - where the British claimed to have 'fixed' it. I can see places where other (US?) authors have picked up some of these practices and interpreted them rather differently. Brown makes no claims about the curved approach or anything like that which might have been the source of the myth. If Brown says he flew a curved approach to counter the length of the nose, he probably did. He doesn't claim to have invented it but they did use it for the Seafire.
 
The problem with the British "fixing" the Corsair's landing technique, is that they trained on the Corsair in the U.S. following USN procedure.
The USN's carrier approach and landing doctrine was to approach the carrier to starboard and turn left past the carrier in a counter-clockwise pattern.
They never flew "straight on" and as for visability over the cowling, early USN Torpedo bombers and Dive bombers had large cowlings, so that really rules out not being able to see over the corsair's cowl. Plus a Corsair pilot had poor viability when the it was on the ground/deck, not in flight.

And it might be noted that the USN operated the F4U on a carrier before the RN, too.
 
J.D. said:
I can see nowhere - thus far - where the British claimed to have 'fixed' it.
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I just want to say that I'm not ascribing this to British claims or saying British historians argue this. But it is a common trope amongst many commentators about the Corsair, of many nationalities. That's pretty straightforward.

I think most folks with a lick of common sense, no matter their nationality, understand that all navies operating a/c with visibility issues came around to some sort of curved approach.

I again apologize that I don't have my old books handy, but even so, I think it's clear that amongst the Interneterati the trope of "FAA taught the USN how to land the F4U" is not uncommon.

If you go to 3:45 in this video from Armoured Archivist, you hear a Brit pilot making the claim as well.


View: https://youtu.be/lH5XSwyb_EU?t=224
"After the success we had with 'em -- well, our pilots had success with them -- the Americans did go back to 'em, eventually."

This is not PIDOOMA.
 
Thumpalumpacus said:
"After the success we had with 'em -- well, our pilots had success with them -- the Americans did go back to 'em, eventually."
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It would be easy to infer that the Americans reinstating the Corsair for deck operations was the result of British success but I'm not completely sure. You also have to remember that what was said at squadron level on such matters probably doesn't constitute the best available information.

I can see where this becomes a problem but it sounds pretty innocuous to me. I also accept that you're not saying that the British or British historians made the claim. The title of the thread got it right: it's a myth. But it's a myth looking for somewhere to land.

I only posted the information about Brown to show that, at least from the British side, there doesn't seem to be a lot in it. I also pointed out that the standards of AC behaviour were lower for the RN than they were for the USN, so 'fixing' is relative anyway...
 
The USN decided to focus on the F6F for pure logistics.
Instead of having parts and supplies for two types, they kept the F6F for carrier ops and provided the F4U and logistics stream to the USMC.

Simplification is what dictated where the Corsair went. Many cases where the F4U operated off carriers during the war, but it boils down to what was most efficient.
 

There's also the fact that we did train them to land on a flattop by Apr 43, used them that way in combat in Nov 43, and settled on the Hellcat not only for ease of flying for newer pilots but also because it made logistics easier in the fleet train.

We did pretty well in the Pacific and didn't really need any tutoring beyond what the Japanese were happy to give us.
 
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By his own admission (Wings of the Navy) Eric Brown didn't fly the Corsair for the first time until Feb 1944, by which time regular FAA squadron pilots had been flying it for nearly 9 months. He himself adds to, or restates, the "myth" by noting:-

".....the only problem was that a further two-and-a-half years [from the first flight of a production F4U-1] were to elapse before the US Navy was to consider it suitable for shipboard operations!"

And

"Oddly enough, the Royal Navy was not quite so fastidious as the US Navy regarding deck landing characteristics and cleared the Corsair for shipboard operation some nine months before its American counterpart."

He seems unaware of what went on in the USN in 1943, and seems to be referring to the F4U going aboard the US fleet carriers at the end of 1944 (see below). By Feb 1944, Illustrious had 2 squadrons aboard in the IO.

The F4U Corsair was an aircraft he had, in his own words, an "unenthusiastic regard" for! Plenty of criticism about the way it handled.

The USN, having sidelined the Corsair, in late 1943 for logistical reasons (except for some F4U-2 nightfighters in 1944) brought it back in Dec 1944 because of the immediate need for more fighters to deal with the kamikaze menace. What was immediately available in Hawaii were two USMC F4U-1 equipped squadrons which went aboard the Essex at the end of Dec 1944. Another 2 squadrons were allocated to each of Bennington, Wasp & Bunker Hill and Franklin between Dec 1944-Mar 1945 in time for Iwo Jima. This was only intended as a temporary measure pending arrival of new USN CAGs with enlarged fighter complements. They stayed on Essex, Wasp and Franklin until March (when the last named was kamikazied & put out of the war), Bunker Hill until May (when she was kamikazied) and Bennington until June.

USN F4U-1 equipped squadrons began turning up in TF58 from March 1945 as part of the replacement CAGs for Essex, Wasp, Franklin, Intrepid and Hancock.
 
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