Vought F4U Corsair, a history, as told by military expert Christian D. Orr: In response to the multiple 19FortyFive articles I’ve written about the best fighter planes of WWII, several of my readers have admonished me to the effect of “But what about the Corsair!?!” Hey, fair enough; after all, I’ve already written about the A-7 Corsair II, so why not give the original U.S. Navy Corsair warbird her due? And besides, the WWII Corsair was the centerpiece warplane in Baa Baa Black Sheep AKA Black Sheep Squadron – starring Robert Conrad (R.I.P.), a young pre-Night Course John Larroquette, a pre-MacGyver Dana Elcar, and Dirk Blocker (son of Bonanza’s Dan Blocker) – which is the 1970s TV series that made me fall in love with military aviation history in the first place! So then, without further ado…
Creation of the Vought F4U Corsair
Unlike her Vietnam War-era “sequel” (so to speak), the original Corsair was built from the get-go to be a true fighter plane, i.e. for engaging in combat against enemy warplanes. Designed and initially manufactured by Chance Vought (now the Vought Aircraft Division of Triumph Aerostructures), she made her maiden flight on 29 May 1940 and entered into operational service with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps on 28 December 1942. This latter date didn’t happen a moment too soon, as by this point, the Grumman F4F Wildcat had been doggedly holding the line on behalf of the USN/USMC against the vaunted Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero-sen fighter plane in the Pacific Theatre of Operations during WWII. But ‘twas the Corsair – along with the Wildcat’s own in-house successor, the F6F Hellcat – that finally enabled American air superiority over the so-called “Zeke.”
