Which variant of the Curtiss Helldiver participated in the Marshall Islands?

[DarrenW]

Chuter:
Thanks. You've really helped shed some light here in this topic. So it appears that driving factors are 1) aerodynamic the reduction of interference drag without the use of wing fillets 2) economics, sort of a trade off between the added expense of the wing fillets & the manufacture of the bent wing 3) practicality i,e, landing gear shorten & wing fold clearance & finally 4) propeller clearance. One would think that propeller clearance would be the primary driving factor for the overall design in the first place, since it was originally postulated by books, magazines & journals for years.

Yes, Just checking out Vegas as I haven't been there in 12 years. Thanks for the info regarding the activities at Reno during non flying days.

 

[DarrenW]

The Corsair was originally designed around a 13' 4" propeller, though later F4U-1C and -1D variants utilized the same 13" 1" propeller found on the Hellcat. With the original propeller there was still about two more inches of ground clearance than we find on the Hellcat. This basically tells us that it wasn't absolutely necessary to design gull wings in order to get the proper propeller clearance.