Was the Corsair over all a better fighter than the zero And was the navy wrong for at first turning down the carrier based use of the corsair?

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Anothony 'Swoff ' Swofford : A story: A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper; his hands remember the rifle.

The Navy was not wrong at all at first. As a carrier plane it had its problems. But once they were fixed it became an excellent aircraft.


"Overall handling of the F4U-1 was acceptable, but not very good. In level flight the Corsair was stable enough to be flown hands-off. The ailerons were light and effective, and the high roll rate was used with good effect in combat with the A6M, which suffered from bad aileron response at high speeds. The elevators were heavy, but effective. Only the rudder really stiffened with increasing speed. For combat maneuvering, the flaps could be deployed 20 degrees.After the first delivery of an F4U-1 on 31 July 1942, more than two years passed before the US Navy cleared the type for shipboard operations. The Corsair was found to be much too difficult to land on a carrier deck. First of all, the pilot could hardly see the deck, because he sat so far aft of the bulky engine. The F4U tended to stall without warning, and was then certain to drop the starboard wing. Quick action had to be taken to prevent a spin. Spin recovery was difficult. In landing configuration, the F4U-1 would stall at 141km/h. A warning light would light at 148km/h. On touchdown, the F4U-1 had sluggish controls and insufficient directional stability. It also was prone to "bounce" because of overly stiff landing gear oleo legs.These characteristics had already been there on the XF4U-1, and if anything they were worse on the production type. Carrier qualification trials on the escort carrier USS Sangamon Bay, on 25 September 1942, caused the US Navy to release the type to the US Marine Corps. After all, the US Navy still had the Grumman F6F Hellcat, which did not have the performance of the F4U but was a far better deck landing aircraft. The Marines needed a better fighter than the F4F Wildcat. For them it was important that the F4U could be put on a carrier, but they usually flew from land bases.

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman

The Zero was no match for the newer, more powerful, faster, better armed and armoured Corsair. The Zero could perhaps out turn it in a dogfight but thats it, they never stood a chance against the F4U. A better comparison would be against the late war fighters such as the Ki-84 or N1K2-J Shiden, both were excellent planes which differed from the early war beliefs in low power, light armour and very good maenouverabilty

An interesting story i read a long time ago, was that the Navy allowed the manufacturers of the Hellcat and the Corsair to work with the opposition models. This allowed them to incorporate improvements into their models from what they discovered. The F4U early deck handling issues were not a problem as they were subsequently assigned to the Marines who liked them very much.

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