You in the mood for a seriously meaty 5,000-word celebration of the Corsair? Of course you are.

“… I felt very lucky to have flown Corsairs; they were the best… though it took me some time to realise this when so many friends died flying them. They always got me home, no matter how much damage they had sustained or how much I had pushed their engines or airframes in trying to survive. I eventually looked at Seafire and Hellcat pilots and thought, rather you than me.”

– Colin Fraser, Corsair pilot with the FAA (quoted in Widowmaker, 2020 edition, by Tim Hillier-Graves)

After five failed fighter designs, Vought finally forged a masterpiece. It steamed into combat in early 1943 and soon proved itself a formidable fighter, meting out destruction to Japanese forces in the air, at sea, and on the ground with equal ferocity. The Corsair’s fighting life was brilliant and long. Despite first flying in 1940, a Corsair shot down three fighters the week Apollo 11 was en route to the moon! Devilishly fast, tough and stylish, it was a plane that could fly into hell and return with the bones of its enemy in its teeth before you even knew it was gone. Of course, the charismatic Corsair was the greatest fighter of World War II, and even well beyond.

Valiant, but ridiculous cases have been made on this site for the likes of the Spitfire, P-47, P-51, Hellcat, and Bf 109, and even a mad one for the Whirlwind. We must discount these pretenders to the throne: they all failed in the ability to fight in any way, in any place, and in any manner. The Corsair didn’t give a hoot. Give it a carrier deck, an airfield or even a muddy field, and it would get airborne, fly faster than pretty much anything else, outfly, outclimb, and outgun, or bomb to pieces anything suicidal enough to stand in its way. It could soak up enemy fire in volumes that would destroy almost anything else, practically giggling, and get home. The other cases are notable for their tricksy avoidance of hard facts; the Corsair has nothing to hide, and everything to brag about.

Corsair versus the world

Let’s consider possible rivals for the title of greatest. First, there are the weaklings, too fragile to fly home after being peppered with a few rounds and too feeble to operate from a carrier: we’re talking the 109s, Spitfires, and Mustangs. Then there’s the P-47. It lumbered into the air a year later than our hero, was too big, and was a piece of crap at turning at low altitudes. It couldn’t even be operated from a carrier—an unfortunate limitation when you’re trying to fight Japan—whereas 15% of Corsair combat sorties were flown from carriers.

The P-47 pilot sat in a machine so vast that enemies could spot it from the breakfast table if it were flying at noon. The Corsair was faster than the Thunderbolt and could outroll and outturn it. The F4U far outclassed the P-47 in high-speed turns, particularly at lower and medium altitudes. In fast manoeuvres, the Corsair was simply untouchable, turning the Ki-43 into a laughing stock as it flailed around like a basketball player on a rollercoaster.

Aerodynamics

The F4U Corsair’s aerodynamics were markedly ahead of the F6F Hellcat, thanks to clever design and engineering. Its inverted-gull wings spread the lifting force more evenly along the wing (like sharing a heavy load evenly instead of letting the tips do all the work), which also reduced interference drag at the wing-fuselage junction. The Corsair’s streamlined fuselage and high fineness ratio (long and skinny like a hotdog rather than a meatball) minimised form drag, improving acceleration and top-speed performance compared to the relatively stubby Hellcat.

The engine cowling directed airflow efficiently for cooling without adding parasitic drag. At operational speeds, the Corsair’s wings experienced high Reynolds numbers (fast, energetic airflow that stays attached instead of separating chaotically), improving lift, control, and predictability in turns. Despite being an earlier design than the Hellcat, it was a generation ahead in aerodynamic sophistication.

Speed

The Corsair’s head designer Rex Biesel described the U.S. Navy as giving Vought three requirements for the Corsair: ‘Speed, speed and more speed.’ To achieve this, Biesel insisted on the cleanest possible aeroplane. Gone were round-headed rivets, undercarriages, and arrestor hooks that stuck into the airstream when retracted, and messy air scoops or anything else unessential that marred aerodynamic efficiency; in came flush riveting and spot welding. This was combined with the most powerful engine available and a massive propeller. It worked.

The slowest Corsair variant, the prototype XF4U-1, could do 405 mph in 1940! It was the first U.S. single-engine fighter to exceed 400 mph in level flight. This was a really big deal; no operational fighters could do 400 mph in 1940. Bear in mind that a mere four years earlier, very few military aircraft could even achieve 300 mph! In 1940, a tiny handful of the most advanced fighter prototypes could reach the magic 400 figure; the best fighters in service were maxing out at 360. The F4U-1 came in

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