Corncob Corsair |
August 1945 Now if there ever has been a favorite airplane for me, it has to be the Chance Vought F4U Corsair, the “bent winged bird”, “U-Bird” or, Whistling Death” or “Marine´s Dream”.Since I have seen this aircraft for the first time, I simply loved it. Sure it definitely is not the most elegant fighter, it´s big and brutish but it was one of the best fighter designs ever build. The story of this special variant is not well known to most people. On the first look it appears almost like any other Corsair. Only on the second look, one will notice some differences. First of all is the so called “blown canopy”, a somewhat longer cowling and if you take a very close look you might even notice, that the tail is somewhat higher than on other Corsairs. The “Super Corsair” how it was unofficially named was build by the Goodyear Cooperation as a “Kamikaze-Interceptor” The Navy wanted to have a fighter with superior speed and climbing performance to counter the Kamikaze threat. Thus Goodyear came up with the idea of planting the monstrous Pratt & Whitney R-4360 “Major engine” under a new cowling into this aircraft. This engine, later known as “corncob engine” was a water cooled, radial engine with 28 cylinders in 4 rows, producing in excess of 3.500 hp.To counter the monstrous torque of this engine the engineers decided to heighten the tail by some inches. To improve the all around vision for the pilot, a so called “blown-canopy” was installed too. Two versions of this bird were build. The F2G-1 was supposed to be a land based version without folding wings and tailhook and the F2G-2 as the carrier-based version. Both fighters were armed with 20mm cannons in the wings instead of the usual .50 calibre machine guns. The first trials of these aircrafts revealed a tremendous climbing performance which was superior to anything else, but the speed advantage was not that great. Before the planed mass production could start the war was over and only about 10 aircrafts were finished. Soon after the war all of them were declared surplus and some found their way to the private air races. With some modifications to the air inlet of the carburettor on top of the cowling, the speed of these aircraft increased significantly and they started to win in most races. At the end they became so successful, that some new rules, restricting the cubic inches of the engines in the air races prohibited them from the further participation. At least 2 of these beasts have survived. One at a private museum in its original US Navy camouflage and markings and the other one after a major overhaul in flying condition at the hands of a private owner in a colourful red white race trim. The model in the scale of 1:72 is nothing special, it´s from small Ma´& Pa´ company in the US. A typical short run injection kit, with some nice but not very good details. Some filling and sanding is necessary. The decals provided allow to build a few versions including one for Air Races. USN 91 René Hieronymus Scale 1:72 Building time: approx. 27 hrs. |