Vought F4U Corsair! If you’ve never seen a Corsair before, your first glance at the outsized propeller and "bent" wings might leave you with the feeling that either this warbird was assembled from parts that didn’t match or it has met with some sort of disaster. But from all these outsized and mismatched parts came one of WWII’s greatest fighter planes. It could outfight, outclimb and (if need be) outrun any prop driven enemy.

The US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics had a long tradition of issuing proposals for aircraft which pushed the limits of available technology. This stimulated the manufacturers ability to respond with new technology to meet the challenge. When "BuAer" sent its proposal for a high performance, carrier based fighter to United Aircraft Corporation (parent company of Vought-Sikorsky) on February 1, 1938, it seemed the Navy might have pushed technology to the point of giving it a hernia. C. J. McCarthy, who was Vought’s General Manager, called in the company’s chief engineer, Rex Beisel. Rex was one of those people who lived by the old motto "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible will take a week, ten days at the most." An elite team was selected for the development of Vought Design #V-166; Frank Albright as project engineer; Paul Baker as aerodynamics engineer; James Shoemaker as propulsion engineer. Each had an assistant. These engineers submitted their work to Beisel who then integrated it all into a final design.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_F4U_Corsair

http://www.aviation-history.com/vought/f4u.html


Pt. 5 Final part