[slumber1]

Were these mostly land based vs. carrier based planes?

I believe they were originally intended to be carrier based but were almost impossible to land on the carriers so the Marines used them as land based squadrons

[tanknetter]

I believe they were originally intended to be carrier based but were almost impossible to land on the carriers so the Marines used them as land based squadrons

The issue was with the oleos on the main gear being too stiff. When the aircraft trapped, it had a tendency to bounce. And bounce and bounce and bounce.

Not a good thing.

So the Corsairs were relegated to USMC squadrons operating ashore until the gear problem was addressed. As the reengineering was going on the F6F entered service in numbers and proved itself to be more than capable of being the fleet's primary fighter. Corsairs did eventually make it back into the fleet (and also into other nations' carrier air arms ... the Royal Navy flew a version of the Corsair with clipped wings that could fit into it's carriers' lower-ceiling hangar decks), but too late to really supplant the F6F.

[19th LA Inf]

I’ll bet there are a few former Marine aviators on this board who will point out that, when Navy pilots found the F4U “almost impossible to land on carriers”, the Marines went ahead and did it! A few years back I worked with a former Marine pilot from the 1945 era who flew them off a carrier. His favorite story was about encountering a flight of lost USAAF P-38s who asked the Marines for a steer to any handy airbase. They led the AAF guys to their carrier and invited them to drop in for coffee. (They knew that Okinawa was barely out of sight).

[Enterprise]

As I recall from my past readings, the Navy did indeed want to put the Corsairs on the carriers. However they were unable to figure out how to land them safely so the Corsairs were initially land based. The Brits figured it out right away and had Corsairs landing on their carriers two years before the Navy figured it out. (No linky, sorry)