![]() ![]() The vicious asymmetric stall was quickly mitigated once the forces acting on the aircraft were fully understood. The burly Corsair entered Navy service as a misunderstood hellion once tamed, it became a legend. That would have been a deadly predicament that not even the most skillful flier could escape from.Īs currently configured, the Corsair was a death trap, living up to its nickname: “Ensign Eliminator.”Īt the 2011 Planes of Fame Airshow in California, Corsairs fly a formation pass. The sudden torque unleashed from the fighter’s powerful R-2800 engine and its 13-foot, 4-inch propeller would exacerbate the bank to the left, promptly flipping the aircraft onto its back just feet above the waves. Porter rightly feared that when a less experienced aviator was faced with the Corsair’s nasty behavior, he would instinctively jam the throttle forward in a desperate attempt to grab raw horsepower to claw his way out of trouble. And the way it stalled would have terrified any pilot.Īs the airspeed bled off, the left wing-with almost no advance warning-lost lift, rolling the airplane abruptly to port. Seconds from touchdown, flying slow and low, with flaps, gear, and arresting hook buzzing in the slipstream, the Corsair suddenly stalled. If other aircraft had been parked on the forward part of the Sangamon’s flight deck, there would have been a pile-up.īut the compromised visibility and wild bounce didn’t frighten Porter as much as the airplane’s behavior during the moments in between. When the Corsair thumped down on the deck, the landing gear’s oleos-shock-absorbing struts-bottomed out, then bounced back like giant pogo sticks, causing the airplane to bound over the arresting wires. The fighter’s ultra-long “hose nose” made it nearly impossible for the pilot to get timely feedback to make corrections to his approach. The Corsair’s cockpit was so far back in its fuselage that Porter found it difficult to see the Sangamon’s landing signal officer on the port side of its deck. After four terrifying landings, he called it quits, certain the airplane was on the verge of killing him. In fall 1942, Lieutenant Commander Sam Porter tested the feasibility of operating the Navy’s bent-wing fighter from the deck of the escort carrier USS Sangamon steaming in the Chesapeake Bay. ![]() The initial carrier-landing qualifications for the Chance Vought F4U Corsair were a disaster. ![]()
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