Corsair: Whistling Death Video

[skb12172]

My dad served with a Corsair squadron on Bermuda in the early to late 50s, when we still had a naval base there. Because of that, I've always had a soft spot for them. He always maintained that the US Navy should have kept them around, upgrading avionics, etc, for a ground support role. Now, with the USAF buying that Brazilian turboprop to use for that very purpose, it looks like he may have had a point.


LINK

[rightisright]

The Bent Wing Bird has always been a favorite of mine. I have fond memories of watching Baa Baa Blacksheep w. my pops.

[randy]

We had one flying at the local air show last month. First one I had ever seen in the air. Cool.

Now, with the USAF buying that Brazilian turboprop to use for that very purpose, it looks like he may have had a point.

There was also an A-1 Skyraider (USAF variant) on static display at the show. It's the bird I would pick to modernize for prop driven CAS. Flying Dump Truck, next best thing to a Warthog.

[Aesop]

They dropped 70% of the fighter-delivered bombs during WWII, and did great at close support in Korea, as they would have in Vietnam, as demonstrated by the A-1s that were used.
And the C-130 has been updated, not replaced, in 58 years(!) of service, while the P-3 is going on 52 years.
Sometimes what you want is a honking big propeller (or four) not a jet.
Thirteen feet and change on the R2800s on an F4U Corsair.

I think it would distress USAF upper management to find out how many of their pilots would rather be dropping WP and napalm on heads rather than flying a sugar-coated white elephant like the F-35.
The Navy and Marines tend to select for that attribute, as would the Army if the Key West protocols about not arming fixed wing a/c weren't in place.
Maybe it would make it more palatable if they'd restrict operating them strictly to senior sergeants/NCOs or warrant officers.

They aren't for Cold War-style head-to-head confrontation with 5th gen weaponry, but in about 90% of the places worldwide where they'd be used, they would be superb, at a fraction of the cost of the latest gee whiz high-tech wunderplanes.

And they still look gorgeous as hell, unless they're coming in hot on you.

[Netpackrat]

One of my favorite airplanes. Baa Baa Black Sheep was my favorite TV show as a very young kid in my single digit years in the 70s.

[First Shirt]

Well, they ain't 'Hogs, but they're damned close! (I was the head intel geek for an A-10 squadron, back about a zillion years ago, and I guess some of it rubbed off.)

I remember lots of mid-shifts in the Watch Center, watching Black Sheep Squadron. Ah, the good old days!

[Rumpshot]

About the summer of 1979, I got the opportunity, no, the pleasure, to meet Pappy Boyington at the airshow in Watsonville.

[Aesop]

I still have the treasured memento of a VMA-214 squadron patch purchased from him in the summer of '83 at the MCAS El Toro Air Show, while I and a number of other AOC poolees went to watch the Blue Angels et al.

He was then 71, probably stood all of 5'5" or 5'6", and had the look about him, if you didn't know him, of just another old airshow geezer.
And if you did know who he was, of the sort of pugnacious old geezer who'd jump on you and kick your ass if you looked at him the wrong way.
(Which is just about spot-on).
A better mating of man and machine has probably never occurred.

Putting Robert Conrad in the role of "Pappy" was the roundest peg ever put in a round hole.
(Conrad noted in interviews that he'd been a Marine for precisely 30 hours, when he joined at 15 to go fight in the Korean War, before his mother found out, called the USMC, and got him bounced out as underage before he got to MCRD.)

[Steamforger]

The P&W R 4360 was the next major upgrade that should have happened. The Boeing Museum has one of the prototypes. I'll try to post pics later.

[Netpackrat]

Well, they ain't 'Hogs, but they're damned close! (I was the head intel geek for an A-10 squadron, back about a zillion years ago, and I guess some of it rubbed off.)

O RLY?

Blackburn wanted to motivate his pilots with a squadron insignia which would live up to the Corsair name and chose the skull and crossbones and the name "The Jolly Rogers". Harry Hollmeyer, as squadron pilot conceived the original design, which was painted on the cowling of the Corsairs that were also known as "hogs."