Hello, and welcome to Aviation Deep Dive The Corsair is one of the most distinctive
single engine aircraft of the Second World War. An American designed and built naval fighter-bomber,
its long nose and gull wing profile make it immediately recognisable. But the design team, led by Rex Beisel, used
this layout not for aesthetic reasons but because it was the easiest and most effective
way of combining raw power with carrier-based practicality. The 18 cylinder Pratt and Whitney R-2800 Double
Wasp radial drove a massive four metre Hamilton Standard propeller that would have fouled
the carrier deck in a conventional aircraft. But giving the wing a downward kink, precisely
where the landing gear were, meant that both engine and propeller could be accommodated
in an airframe whose undercarriage could be short and sturdy enough to survive deck landings. The Double Wasp engine and fuel tank were
both placed forward of the pilot and accounted for a large part of its ten metre length,
giving it an excellent centre of gravity, and the nickname ‘Hose Nose’ from its
pilots. But this design also meant that the Corsair
would be more difficult to fly and, more particularly, to land than its pilots would have liked. This is where the Royal Navy, or more precisely,
the Fleet Air Arm, enters the story. The Fleet Air Arm was the unloved stepchild
of British air power. It had only been handed over to the Royal
Navy in May 1939, having previously been under the control of the RAF, who had not had the
resources or understanding to take very good care of it. The legacy was a strange collection of mismatched
aircraft designed to fight a very different war than the one that broke out in September
that year. They had the Fairey Swordfish, a biplane torpedo
bomber that would eventually deliver much more than its ageing looks promised, but which
was essentially obsolete. They had the Blackburn Skua, an unwieldy fighter-bomber
that fought valiantly despite slow speed and plodding handling, as well as its stablemate
the Blackburn Roc, essentially the same aircraft but with a turret replacing the very brave
rear gunner with his single .303 gun. And a few months later, they had the Fairey
Fulmar, a sort of more potent, navalized Fairey Battle that also fought well but which was
required to forget that its dad was a light bomber and try to act like a fighter. The only truly dedicated fighter was the Sea
Gladiator. Like the Swordfish, this was a biplane that
owed its design more to the First World War than the Second, and although it would perform
bravely over Malta later in the war, it was hopelessly outclassed. And that forms a postscript to all these aircraft. Outdated and designed by well-intentioned
people for the wrong conflict, they owed their success to some brave crews fighting forbidding
odds. But as the war continued and Britain found
itself stretched between the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean
and the Pacific, it became clear to even the resource-strapped Fleet Air Arm that it needed
slightly less doomed heroism and many, many more aircraft – particularly ones that were
capable of meeting enemy fighters on much more equal terms. The most obvious way of solving the problem
was to use the Spitfire and Hurricane, but neither aircraft was ideal. The Spitfire’s narrow track, outwardly retracting
undercarriage proved to be fatally unsuited to the impact of carrier landings and deck
operations. The Hurricane was better, but it was a much
less able fighter. Both of them lacked the range needed for naval
operations where distances could be huge and where the minimum requirement for an effective
fighter aircraft was one that could mount standing patrols which might last for hours. Part of the answer lay in an unfilled French
order for Grumman Wildcats, which the British took over. They soon ordered more to fill the yawning
gap in aircraft numbers. Pilots liked the Wildcat and praised it for
its ruggedness and handling. Seeing as the American aircraft industry had
already provided them with one very capable aircraft, the British hoped that the next
generation of American fighters would be even better. When the Corsair was suggested, they took
one look at its performance figures, particularly its range, and placed an order. The Fleet Air Arm pilots duly had their first
look at the Corsair in the summer of 1943 when the pilots of four squadrons travelled
to airfields in Brunswick in Maine and Quonset Point in Rhode Island in the eastern United
States to begin flying them. They gradually progressed through basic familiarisation
flights to dummy deck landings and then to deck landings on US carriers. But there were accidents, some of them fatal,
just as the US Navy already knew that there would be. They had conducted deck trials back in 1942
and concluded that the Corsair handled in a way that made it inherently unsafe for carrier
operations. Instead, they gave it to land-based US Marine
Corps squadrons who used it for the first time in combat at Guadalcanal in February
1943, but not before it had acquired the nickname of the ‘ensign eliminator’ for its unforgiving
handling. It was not accepted for service on American
carriers until April 1944. The difficulty of operating an aircraft with
such a long nose on a rolling and pitching carrier deck was obvious, but there were other,
much less obvious problems. The Corsairs tended to float as they completed
their approach, stubbornly refusing to land. When they were finally slammed onto the deck,
they tended to bounce so hard that they cleared the arrestor wires meant to catch the aircraft’s
arrestor hook and crashed into the deck or, worse yet, flew over it completely and veered
over the stern or the side while everyone watched in horror. There is even one story of a pilot being decapitated
by an arrestor wire after a failed landing. And there was another, equally fatal flaw. As the airspeed bled off, the left wing of
the Corsair could stall, losing lift and rolling the aircraft to the left. A rookie pilot who tried to get out of the
stall by opening the throttle to increase power would find that the increased torque
from the Double Wasp and its massive propeller would make this much, much worse and flip
the aircraft onto its back with no room or time to recover. The Fleet Air Arm now had to address these
problems, largely because they had no choice. Britain needed aircraft, the Corsair was available,
and so the relationship would have to be made to work. Necessity meant that they made several changes. .
They introduced a variable rate bleed valve onto the oleo legs from the undercarriage
which stopped it bouncing. And they also introduced a wide, curving approach,
first tried with the navalized Spitfire, that would lead the Corsair down onto the deck
with a minimal risk of stalling and which would keep the carrier deck visible until
the last minute. Other modifications also made other aspects
of the pilot’s life easier. British carriers had armoured decks, which
meant that there was less room in the hangars below the flight deck. Eight inches had to be clipped off the wings
of the Corsair in order to accommodate them, which had the unintended benefit of improving
its roll rate in combat and its sink rate on landing. The top flaps on the cowling were locked down
to prevent oil from splattering on the aircraft’s windscreen, the seat was raised in later versions,
slightly improving visibility, and a more roomy canopy was introduced for the same reason,
looking similar to the Malcolm hood fitted on RAF Mustangs. It meant that the early Mark I Corsairs looked
very different from the ones that followed, with their restrictive greenhouse canopies
and dull, factory applied camouflage. As the new modifications started being made,
this initial batch of 95 Mark Is were superseded by 510 of the more advanced F4U-1s delivered
direct from Vought and designated as Corsair IIs in British service. Even though 430 more would come from Brewster
and be designated as the F3A-1 or Corsair III, poor quality control meant that none
of them saw combat – and quite a few of these would lose their wings in flight due
to weak wing fixings. Fortunately, 857 more came from Goodyear as
the FG-1A or Corsair IV and it was only these, along with the Mark II, that would see action. As well as an updated camouflage scheme more
suited to naval operations than life in New England, the Corsair II and IV would also
need new roundels if they were going to operate in the Pacific as intended. The RAF roundels of the period had a large
red centre and a thin white circle separating it from the thick blue outer circle. Japanese aircraft also featured a large, red
circle known as the Hinomaru, or ‘meatball’ to Allied servicemen and the British felt
that the red disc at the centre of their roundels might be mistaken for the Japanese markings. So, from September 1943, the red disc was
painted over. US-style bars were added in March 1945 to
further copy American insignia. But all these paint schemes lay in the future. Despite the fact that the aircraft that was
destined to make its reputation in the Pacific, the British Corsairs’ first operational
experience was with 1834 and 1836 Squadrons in an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz
in northern Norway. They flew as top cover for Fairey Barracuda
aircraft in Operation Tungsten in April 1944 in an attack that left the Bismarck-class
ship on fire and out of action when it was at anchor in Kaafjord. There were further attacks on the Tirpitz,
with the Corsairs being used to suppress nearby flak batteries by strafing them. One of the pilots was a Canadian, Lieutenant
Robert Hampton Gray, who made his name attacking through a particularly dense curtain of anti-aircraft
fire and strafing nearby destroyers, and whose name crops up again in the Corsair’s story
a year later. The Corsairs were in action again later the
same month when they attacked Bodo harbour and nearby merchant shipping, but it was in
the Pacific where British and US Corsairs had their greatest success. They announced their arrival by joining a
strengthened Eastern Fleet formed around HMS Illustrious in Sri Lanka, helping to mount
a strike on the island of Sabang in Sumatra and then joining in with an attack on Port
Blair in the Andaman Islands as both fighter escort and as a combat air patrol over the
task force where their extended range was a huge advantage. The Eastern Fleet were boosted by two more
aircraft carriers along with the Corsair IIs of 1834 and 1836 squadrons and in July 1944
they attacked Sabang again, with two being selected to attack a radar and communications
station on the island. They also recorded their first air-to-air
victories, shooting down a Mitsubishi Ki-21 Sally bomber and an A6M Zero to the west of
the island. The Japanese retaliated, and the Corsairs
claimed around five enemy aircraft, with one of their pilots winning a Distinguished Service
Cross for skilled flying. In mid-September, US forces landed on the
Pacific island of Peleliu, with the Corsairs taking part in diversionary raids against
Sumatran targets and attacking a railway yard at Sigli in northern Sumatra. They scored seven more victories over Nakajima
Ki-43 Oscars flying from the Nicobar Islands in October. In November 1944, the British Pacific Fleet
was formed and three more carriers joined to give it even more weight. HMS Victorious had 1834 and 1836 Squadrons,
HMS Illustrious had 1830 and 1833 Squadrons and HMS Formidable had 1841 and 1842 Squadrons,
meaning that there were now 78 Corsairs available to the Royal Navy. They began strikes against Japanese oil production
in Sumatra in January 1945, with the Corsairs attacking airfields at Medan, Tandjonpoera
and Troemon to suppress the defenders’ air activity and Sub Lieutenant Leslie Durno became
the Fleet Air Arm’s first Corsair ace when he shot down a K1-46 Dinah and shared in the
destruction of a Ki-21. More attacks came against refineries in Palembang
on the northeast coast, where they clashed with Nakajima Ki-44 Tojos that were led by
Japanese ace First Lieutenant Hideaki Inayama, but in a later strike against Soengei Gerong
oil refinery, Durno was hit by fierce anti-aircraft fire and although he managed to ditch his
aircraft, he was never seen again. The fleet sailed for the invasion of Okinawa
that started on April 1, but found that a growing hazard was the committed kamikaze
attacks against the Allied fleet. While one was shot down, along with a Zero,
one got through the screen of fighter cover and slammed into the island on Indefatigable. Kamikaze attacks continued as the fleet progressed
toward the Japanese home islands, with many Corsairs being wiped out by in a strike on
HMS Formidable and HMS Indomitable, and Lieutenant Don Sheppard claimed his fifth kill to become
another Corsair ace. By the time the fleet retired to Sydney, it
had been at sea for 62 days but had claimed 42 Japanese aircraft shot down. With Okinawa successfully taken, attacks started
on the Japanese mainland. There were repeated strikes on shipping, on
communication lines and on airfields, but in reality, there were few Japanese aircraft
that were able to get into the air. The last Corsair kill over Japan was a lonely,
determined and doomed Aichi B7A Grace torpedo bomber that was shot down heading for the
fleet, but one of the saddest incidents happened a few weeks before the end of the war on August
9. Robert Hampton Gray had flown in the attack
on the Tirpitz, also earned a Distinguished Service Cross for sinking a Japanese destroyer
near Tokyo and was tasked with continuing to harass shipping when he saw the destroyer
Anasuka anchored in Onagawa Bay. Diving in to attack, he sank the vessel with
a bomb, but in the process, his Corsair was hit. Gray crashed into the bay and was killed. His bravery earned him a posthumous Victoria
Cross. For the British Corsairs, the end came just
as quicky. With the cessation of hostilities, the Fleet
sailed for Australia and the servicemen headed home. The squadrons were swiftly disbanded, and
there remained the question of what to do with their aircraft. This is why this chapter of the Corsair story
finally ends off the east coast of Australia in 1946. Under the terms of the Lend Lease agreement,
Britain could either pay for the aircraft it had borrowed for the duration of hostilities,
or send them back. America did not want them and postwar Britain
was broke, which meant that alternative arrangements had to be made. Aircraft that had served with the British
Pacific Fleet and others that had been delivered but never flown were gathered together at
bases and storage facilities in the east of Australia, waiting for the arrival of half
a dozen aircraft carriers. These carriers then had the aircraft loaded
onto their crowded flight decks and sailed to locations around the Sunshine Coast and
Sydney Heads where the Corsairs were unceremoniously dumped into the sea. Fire axes were used to make holes in some
of the airframes and help them sink, but all ended their working lives in the same way. A Corsair cost 75,000 dollars to build and
around 720 were dumped at sea, meaning that around 54 million dollars’ worth of cutting
edge piston engine fighters were now slowly making their final journey to the bottom of
the Coral Sea. An Australian company called International
Warbird Salvage tried to bring some airframes back to the surface in the early nineties,
but the salt water had not been kind to them and when they reached the surface, it turned
out that they were too badly corroded to restore. However, there are still plenty of preserved
Corsairs in existence. Most are in the US, but two of them are in
the UK, with one to be found at the Fighter Collection in Duxford. It was originally delivered to the US Navy
as an FG-1D and is currently painted as a British Mark IV. The other is also a Mark IV, and is resident
at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, having first been delivered to the Royal Navy
in 1944. Another can be found in Robert Hampton Gray’s
native Canada, and was painted to look like his aircraft, but had to be sold to a private
buyer after a runway accident made it unflyable. Its combat career might only have lasted around
two years, but the Corsair had a dramatic impact on the Fleet Air Arm. Despite teething troubles that asked difficult
questions of pilots and engineers, it gave them a fighter whose endurance and combat
performance were equal to their ambition. They deserved more than the watery and ignominious
end many of them received, but their place in British aviation history is secure. A huge thanks to my Patrons, on screen now,
for supporting the channel and Thankyou so much for watching this video of Aviation Deep
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