United Aircraft’s Vought division submitted the design in competition for a new fighter requirement put forth by the U.S. The Corsair was the first of several successful fighter designs built around Pratt & Whitney’s R-2800 Double Wasp engine, so called because of the double bank of nine cylinders that was designed to increase the power of the company’s famous Wasp engine. (Get more in-depth looks at the history of military aviation inside Military Heritage magazine.) Development on the F4U Corsair The events depicted in the series were contrived, but the airplanes were real, and the series was based on real men who had flown the same type of fighter against the Japanese several decades earlier when the bent-wing Corsair symbolized Marine Corps Aviation. The dark blue forms of the squadron’s Corsairs came on the screen every week, thrilling millions who watched the fictionalized exploits of the men of VMF-214, the United States Marine Corps fighter squadron commanded by the legendary Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, as they battled sinister Japanese aces in the skies over the Solomon Islands in 1943. Thanks to the rather far-fetched mid-1970s TV series Black Sheep Squadron, the bent-wing image of the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair is no doubt one of the most vivid of the World War II fighters in the minds of most Americans.
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