They are impressive planes that look like they mean business.
Gee Bee R-1
Jimmy Doolittle flew one of these in the thirties. That he lived to write about it is a miracle.
Posted on 01/24/2009 9:25:30 AM PST by Dysart
DALLAS — After four years of painstaking labor, artisans of the Vought Aircraft Retirees Club have restored an icon of U.S. aviation history, a World War II-vintage F4U Corsair fighter plane.
Working with pieces and parts from several wrecked and scrapped aircraft and building many others themselves from drawings, the retirees have spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars re-creating a version of the distinctive, gull-winged plane that Japanese soldiers and sailors dubbed "Whistling Death."
Rebuilding the Corsair, one of two great fighter planes — the other was the Grumman F6F Hellcat — that enabled Navy and Marine pilots to dominate the skies in the Pacific theater, "has been a real work of love for the last four years," said Hank Merbler, president of the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation.
The recently completed plane, which isn’t flyable and will eventually end up in an area museum, will be rolled out for several hundred invited guests today in a hangar at Vought Aircraft Industries west Dallas complex.
Launched in 1938 to meet Navy requirements for a high-speed fighter airplane, the Corsair is the most famous aircraft designed and produced by the company founded by the aviation pioneer Chance Vought.
"It’s an airplane I’m really proud of. If you read all the history of it, it’s really something," said Dillon Smith, a 34-year employee of Vought who retired in 1994.
"It did what it was designed to do and that was defeat the Japanese Zero," Smith said.
The first new, highly capable fighter aircraft to reach the Pacific theater early in 1943, the Corsair was initially deployed with ground-based Marine squadrons.
Corsairs were flown by the famous "Black Sheep" Squadron, led by Marine Maj. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, whose exploits were the basis for the mid-1970s television show Baa Baa Black Sheep.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
That long nose was hard to see over. On 29 July 1999, a flight of a Bearcat and two F4Us were taxiing for takeoff at Oshkosh. The Bearcat stopped and the first F4U ran into it, destroying both aircraft. Then the second F4U veered off the taxiway and was substantially damaged. I’m pretty sure the lead F4U was actually owned by Vought and being flown by a company exec.
Be careful what you ask for - they'd be portrayed "air-raiding villages and killing civilians".
Thanks...That sounds right, I remember reading when landing an F4U on a carrier the pilot was practically blind.
LOL!
I remember years ago, I was working in New Zealand, at the Antarctic supply depot storage yard at the Christchurch airport. One day a flat bed truck came in with the pieces of a Douglas SBD Dauntless on the bed. It had been found somewhere in the bush, and had just been retrieved, and was on it’s way to a museum for restoration. You could see the faded NZ insignia on the wing, with the US insignia underneath (must have been lend-lease). It looked to me like long, hard work was ahead for the restorers.
sources anyone?
They are impressive planes that look like they mean business.
Jimmy Doolittle flew one of these in the thirties. That he lived to write about it is a miracle.
I've heard this before but not certain I recall the answer. But I'll take my best guess anyway, did it have to with facilitating carrier landings or working with them on the deck? IE, allowing men to easily walk under the wings? Seem to recall something about that. There's an embedded youtube video of an Air show from Dover AFB on the first link tanknetter posted. A good one.
“I also learned this week that the F-4U is the only piston-engined fighter to shoot down a jet fighter. It happened against a Mig-15 during the Korean War.”
That was Frank Fisch, a good friend of mine, and he was a Navy carrier pilot.
A Corsair pilot was also the only Navy ace of the Korean war and the last piston-powered ace. Cdr Guy Bordelon had a detachment of F4U-5N night fighters on board Princeton, as I recall, and near the end in July 1953 he was sent on detached duty to one of the shore bases where “Bedcheck Charlie” night bombers were making nuisances. I believe Bordelon smoked three of them in successive nights and had two other victories to add up to his five. He was picked up and flown back to the carrier for a suitable honors ceremony. Some Air Force pilot “borrowed” his F4U where he had left it parked and wrote it off.
So Zero pilots could easily identify what was about to blow them out of the sky... ;-)
Agree. That is a TBF-Avenger.
My father flew in those (not as a pilot) off the carrier Essex during WWII.
Whistling Death Ping
IIRC, it may have been the first, but during Nam, a Spad (A-1C SkyRaider) from the USS Intrepid CVA-11 took down a Mig 17. VA-176 I think, but I disremember who. There's a book about SkyRaiders somewhere that has it there. Somewhere buried in my library stacks I've got a beat-up paperback about it...
Found it on Amazon:
Skyraider: The Douglas A-1 "Flying Dump Truck" by Navy Captain Rosario Rausa. Damn good book.
Further: yes, there were a couple of Mig-17's shot down by A-1 Skyraiders in Vietnam:
From Google... (I know, but...)
While flying a RESCAP mission over North Vietnam from the carrier USS Intrepid on Yankee Station in the Tonkin Gulf, four VA-176 A-1 Skyraider pilots were engaged by four North Vietnamese MiG-17s. During this encounter, one MiG 17 was confirmed downed, another was probably downed, and a third was damaged.
LCDR Leo Cook and his wingman LTJG Wiley were the lead section of Skyraiders working to locate and hopefully rescue a downed US pilot in North Vietnam. While maneuvering at low altitude between ridges and cloud layers, they were jumped by what turned out to be two sections of MiG 17s. Calling out the attack on their common radio frequency, Cook and Wiley fought for their lives. LT Pete Russell and LTJG Tom Patton soon arrived in the area and immediately gained a position of advantage on the MiGs. The details of this encounter were taped by the intelligence officer on board the Intrepid after the incident.
The tape was provided to the Skyraider Association by Walt Darran (pilot, VA-165, a sister Skyraider squadron on the Intrepid) and can be downloaded in RealAudio format at
http://skyraider.org/skyassn/sartapes/migkill/migkill.htm
------------------ Also earlier:
<snip> ...Coming around the hill we saw Ed Greathouse and Jim LYNNE low with the MiG lined up behind them. I fired a short burst and missed, but got his attention. He turned hard into us to make a head-on pass. Charlie and I fired simultaneously as he passed so close that Charlie thought that I had hit his vertical stabilizer with the tip of my tail hook and Charlie flew through his wake. Both of us fired all four guns. Charlie's rounds appeared to go down the intake and into the wing root and mine along the top of the fuselage and through the canopy. He never returned our fire, rolled inverted and hit a small hill exploding and burning in a farm field. Charlie and I circled the wreckage while I switched back to number two radio. We briefly considered trying to cut off the other MiG, but were dissuaded by the voice of Ed Greathouse asking what we thought we were doing staying in the area when STRAUSS was reporting numerous bogeys inbound to our position. We took the hint and headed out low level to the Tonkin Gulf were we rejoined with our flight leader.
So it looks like there were several Migs who fell victim to the Spad in Nam. I know, technically Spads were 'Attack' planes, not fighters, but still...
Whadda'ya know...
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