History of the Vaught F4U Corsair Plane
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, out climb and (if need be) outrun any prop
driven enemy. The original Corsair plane, seen below, has been recreated
in the form of a very popular pedal
plane, called the Corsair
Pedal Plane.
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.
Early on, Shoemaker chose the Pratt-Whitney R-1830 Wasp air-cooled radial
engine because of it’s long history of reliability, and the V-166-A was
designed around this engine. But, in 1940, the BuAer’s quest for speed
resulted in a switch to the experimental XR-2800-4 version of the
Pratt-Whitney Double Wasp, with a two-stage supercharger for the prototype
XF4U-1 Corsair. The R-2800 engine was the most powerful engine in the
world in 1940, exceeding 100 hp (74.6 kW) per cylinder for each of its 18
cylinders. The change in engines resulted in the design number being
changed to Vought Design #V-166-B. The V-166-A was never built.
With the awesome 2,804 cubic inch (46 liter) Double Wasp air-cooled radial engine developing 1,850 hp (1,380.6 kW), the only way to convert that kind of horsepower efficiently into thrust was with a huge Hamilton Standard Hydromatic, 3 blade prop which measured 13 feet 4 inches (4.06 meters) in diameter. And that created a problem of deck clearance for the prop. It seemed either the main landing gear had to be lengthened, or the prop had to be shortened.
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source: www.aviation-history.com