[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).

[tanknetter]

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).

I'd point out that any Marine F4U jockey who encountered P-38s off Okinawa would've been flying a later-model Corsair with the landing-gear issue corrected.

It ultimately came down to standardization. When the F4U was pulled from CV duty, USN squadrons standardized on the Hellcat. The Marines, who were operating ashore, got the Corsairs. The two aircraft were close enough in capabilities that when newer models arrived they were assigned according to whoever already flew them. So when the Marines went back aboard the carriers, they took their newer-model Corsairs with them.