Vought F4U Corsair – The Bent Wing Bird
Vought F4U Corsair – The Bent Wing Bird The Vought F4U Corsair is an instantly recognisable carrier-based WW2-era fighter aircraft. It received many upgrades throughout its lifetime and even saw action in Korea. In this article, we take a look at the Bent Wing Bird. The F4U’s Background The inception of the F4U was very much like many other aircraft; the US Navy set out a specification and invited various aircraft manufacturers to come up with designs. They wanted a single-engine fighter aircraft that would have a range of 1,000 miles and carried at least 4 guns. Rather oddly, as part of the specification, it had to have anti-aircraft bombs. In the late 30s, the thinking was that fighter aircraft would fly high above enemy bombers formations and drop these charges into them. This idea never really took off. Design The XF4U-1 prototype was the very first aircraft to be designed around the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine. This beast of an engine was th