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WWII Corsair Cockpit Interior
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Way cool, what a spartan seat, love the intentional spins forbidden sign and the view over the nose, really great pics I mean if you blew a fuse there ain't no auto pilot for the plane to carry on while you change it or a reflector sight bulb. Appreciated
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I'm happy I had a place to finally display them to people who can appreciate them. I saw a few other photo collections of CAF items I've taken while looking for these photos I might show soon that I've never shown anywhere else before. I was the editor of the Dallas newsletter for 8 years and I was always taking photos for future use, but never had the room in the newsletter to use a lot of them.... With our format here on Milsurps.com it's easy to display them for folks.
The seat bucket is a typical WWII American fighter seat. Parachutes were hung under the pilot's rear end so it fit under them as a cushion in that bucket. The CAF Corsair pilots actually wear WWII style parachutes while doing demo flights at air shows.
Regards,
~ Harlan
PS, Cinders.... The warning sign that really cracked me up was the sign saying not to fold up the wings in flight! The military can come up with some pretty silly warning signs even today!
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Does the red "rising sun" sticker on the instrument panel indicate a "kill" to the name of the pilot/aircraft or does it signify something else? British practice was to put such motifs on the engine cowlings of single engine fighters etc and on the forward fuselage area of larger multi engine aircraft, often just forward of the cockpit. With bomber aircraft a Swastika indicated a downed enemy aircraft and a black bomb motif a successful bombing op.. A larger red bomb motif indicated a successful raid on Berlin, the most heavily defended city in continental Europe, and, slightly amusingly, an ice cream cone a successful raid on an Italian target. I believe that from the second half of the war, after victory in North Africa, the RAF often flew on to a North African airfield to refuel and rearm after a raid on an Italian target.
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Yes I saw that as well and a bit of mirth crept in imagining the sun being blotted out as the wings folded up whilst happily flying along "Pappy" Boyington is another good read in "Baa Baa Black Sheep" from memory I think he survived being strafed in the water after being shot down I think a round hit his ankle, he then survived bein a prisoner of the Japanese. I think also he did end up in Japan as a prisoner after some terrible times on the islands a good read. I have Preddy's P-51 Top Ace book to go into next having just brought a copy author signed memorial foundation one.
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What switch
FA-18 cockpit for comparison "What switch was that one you said not to press?"
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When you see surviving vehicles, tanks and aircraft it makes you wonder what chance of fate looked kindly on that particular item to survive the gas axe. For instance, who exactly, personally signed-off that the last liberty ship should be preserved for the nation? And which particular person did the same for the top-scoring (but not quite as it later transpires) Lancaster that survives in London? Or that particular Corsair.......... Or ........
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Cool! I'd love to take a peek in the local one.
Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Harlan
The warning sign that really cracked me up was the sign saying not to fold up the wings in flight!
Image some poor pilot returning at night, shot up, maybe a loss of blood, with a plane on the edge of extinction. It's awful easy, in battle conditions, to get mixed up with all the knobs and levers, especially in a Corsair that was very difficult to land on a carrier deck because the cockpit was located so far aft of the nose. I'll bet the sign was affixed because one or more pilots, perhaps in the state of shock, pulled the wrong lever.
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Yes Peter in Garbett & Goulding their book on the Lancasters has some very well missioned Lancs were at first left to lanquish in fields and then chopped without a sigh from anyone, now they are consigned to history and photographs how sad it is.
Very nice looking "Hose Nose" Bob....:super:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Seaspriter
Image some poor pilot returning at night, shot up, maybe a loss of blood, with a plane on the edge of extinction. It's awful easy, in battle conditions, to get mixed up with all the knobs and levers, especially in a Corsair that was very difficult to land on a carrier deck because the cockpit was located so far aft of the nose. I'll bet the sign was affixed because one or more pilots, perhaps in the state of shock, pulled the wrong lever.
The Corsair was almost seen as a failure as a ship-born aircraft because that massive engine with long nose was so difficult to line up for landing on the deck and to be able to see the arrestor cables so many crash landed because they couldn't easily judge where the arrestor gear were located (Little room for error in WWII era carriers!) As such, many Corsairs were at first mostly used at land based islands and flown a lot by the US Navy and Marines from land only. Many early Corsairs were given to the Royal Navy because of this (perceived) shortcoming. The British quickly devised a steep overhead approach landing method with full flaps where they came in high and banked sharply in a circular overhead approach method so they could line up with the center of the deck while banking sharply just before heading to the arrestor cables... After their success, the pilots of the Royal Navy trained the US Navy how to land the Corsair on ships! After that, the full potential of the Corsair was put to use! :red face:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bob Womack
THANKS BOB! I have always loved the early US Navy tri-color the most of all! The CAF's Corsair was painted in that livery for some time.
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Thanks for the Pappy Boyington moment. Picked up his book at a fun show and read it. Good read.
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I believe that it is known who asked that the Lancaster which is now in the R.A.F. museum, London be saved but I forget where exactly I heard or saw it. This particular example is interesting not just because of it being the Lancaster with the 2nd highest number of missions to it's name but also I believe that I am correct in saying that the fuselage of this particular aircraft was an Avro Manchester fuselage as many of the early Lancasters had. I believe that on this example the completed fuselage was taken off the Avro Manchester production line but it didn't actually fly as a Manchester.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peter Laidler
When you see surviving vehicles, tanks and aircraft it makes you wonder what chance of fate looked kindly on that particular item to survive the gas axe. For instance, who exactly, personally signed-off that the last liberty ship should be preserved for the nation? And which particular person did the same for the top-scoring (but not quite as it later transpires) Lancaster that survives in London? Or that particular Corsair.......... Or ........
Or the Short Solent Flying Boat at the Museum of Transport & Technology in Auckland, New Zealand... :thup:
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Probably the stroke of a genius in Chadwick planting 4 RR Merlins on that aircraft from memory they kept the wings to 100' so it could fit through the hanger doors, the Manchester if it lost an engine assumed the flying ability of a brick, more aircraft were lost or aborted than were lost on actual missions. The only real draw back for crews was the main spar which separated the crew and was a fair obstacle to negotiate in a burning spinning aircraft but that said it could carry an enormous bomb load.
Some Lanc's were fitted with radial air cooled engines and paddle propellor blades and were referred to by their crews as "Paddle Steamers" they were well liked by the crews no coolant to be lost, they climbed and flew very well, the Lanc was the only WWII aircraft that could carry the 22,000lb Grand Slam bomb the largest non-nuclear weapon dropped in WWII.
CE I love the crib in Pic 6 and the emergency stretcher you got a decent amount of room to nosh up as well not like today's commercial jets Thanks for the post.
Torpedo's No only the aerial mine - or bouncing bomb as they did not want to give the game away this in turn led to Highball where a Mosquito could deliver 2 small bouncing bombs at once for ships in the Fjords they carried out tests on an old battleship which I have forgotten the name of but it is there on utube. (HMS Malaya)
The Germans developed one as well but I think it was rocket powered (just to go one better)
Highball ~ WWII Bouncing Bomb Tests at Ashley Walk, New Forest 1943 - YouTube
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The reason that the Lancaster had such a long bomb bay was because one of the design specifications of the Manchester was that it must be able to carry torpedoes and as the Lancaster inherited basically the Manchester fuselage it also inherited the long bomb bay. I have never heard of a Lancaster ever actually caring torpedoes or deploying them; does any-one know if this was ever attempted from a Lanc? It must have been tried from a Manchester as this was a design spec, although it may have only been tried.
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Sorry about these two 'late entries', but I didn't think I'd ever find them on my hard-drive again..
This is a painting done by a Texan member of the CAF named Roy Grinnell depicting a Corsair on final with full flaps deployed for landing. Actually, they were usually very close to the carrier, but this gives a cool perspective.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...x0fxs3ek-1.jpg
Also in the same folder I located this photo that's pretty cool, as you can see part of the complex operation of the main gear folding up.
The 'History Channel' had a team at our hangar and they asked me if I could try to get a photo of their crew filming them "at work".
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...el20Medi-1.jpg
I emailed them a high resolution photo of this after they were filming at another location and they really liked the photo... (Lucky shot!) :lol:
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CINDERS, doesn't the 22,000lb Grand Slam bomb remain the largest non-nuclear bomb to be actually used in anger in warfare and dropped from an aircraft to this day??? Although larger non-nuclear, air dropped, bombs exist I hadn't thought that they had actually been used in anger in warfare???
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I believe you're correct Flying10uk. The US tested a larger conventional bomb just a few years back, but it was only a 'test' in Arizona or such. They said it shook towns many miles away.
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Flying10UK post #17 I said = Some Lanc's were fitted with radial air cooled engines and paddle propellor blades and were referred to by their crews as "Paddle Steamers" they were well liked by the crews no coolant to be lost, they climbed and flew very well, the Lanc was the only WWII aircraft that could carry the 22,000lb Grand Slam bomb the largest non-nuclear weapon dropped in WWII.
Harlan That might be the MOAB = Mother Of All Bombs
The TSAR Bomb from Russia is the largest Nuclear weapon dropped with a yield of 50 Mega tons from Wikapedia ~The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage bomb with Trutnev-Babaev[6] second and third stage design,[7] with a yield of 50 to 58 megatons of TNT (210 to 240 PJ).[8] This is equivalent to about 1,350–1,570 times the combined power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They wanted to test a 100 MTN bomb but there would have been to much fallout and the plane would not have been able to reach a safe distance presumably destroyed by the shock waves or heat.
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The "ten ton" Grand Slam bomb, and its predecessor, the "Tallboy" were not just built for "bang" but built for speed.
Dropped from 20 thousand feet, they were going supersonic well before impact.
This, and the very robust nature of the forward bomb casing, meant that when attacking heavily protected structures, like U-boat pens, the bomb would punch through many feet of reinforced concrete before exploding INSIDE these underground structures: VERY messy.
Ditto with big bridges. Bomb lands somewhere NEAR a support pier and penetrates the mud etc. to a great depth. THEN, or after a suitably chosen interval, it goes off, generating a huge underground cavity into which falls the pier and a substantial amount of bridge deck. See the Bielefeld Viaduct demolition for the idea.
The 12,000 pound Tallboys didn't do much for the seaworthiness of the "Tirpitz", either. See: RAF bombers sink the German battleship Tirpitz! 1944 - YouTube
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I think from Barnes Wallis's "Bombs" book that when they dropped the very first test Grandslam they had a camera mounted in the center of the target plus others at a peripheral distance as there was no way they reckoned the center camera was going to be hit. The Grandslam's and the Tallboys rear fins were off set by 5 degrees imparting a spin to gyroscopiclly stabilize them. So the further the bombs fell the faster they spun. And that camera in the dead center of the test bomb well you guessed it the bomb landed right on top of it, a crater from a 22,000lb bomb left a crater rim 100 feet wide they were called the earthquake bombs the 12,00lb Tallboys were used to seriously damage/destroy the Tirpiz the Bismarks sister ship as Churchill called her the scourge of the Atlantic
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Cast and machined in Sheffield and filled at Glascoed in Wales
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"Sheffield Steel", with a surprise!
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And the other tricky thing about the Lancaster, was its modular construction.
It gets better: Each module, be it wing section or fuselage, was designed to be transportable on standard British railway rolling stock of the era, and to fit within the standard loading gauge when so transported.
This enabled far-flung sub-contractors to be involved in the manufacture of very large aircraft as never before.
They could, essentially, be put together in any convenient "big shed" (hangar) with a decent flying field nearby.
It also meant that if an aircraft suffered damage, a "module" could be swapped out at a suitable repair shop as opposed to a major rebuild or scrapping.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bruce_in_Oz
And the other tricky thing about the Lancaster, was its modular construction.
It gets better: Each module, be it wing section or fuselage, was designed to be transportable on standard British railway rolling stock of the era, and to fit within the standard loading gauge when so transported.
This enabled far-flung sub-contractors to be involved in the manufacture of very large aircraft as never before.
It also meant that if an aircraft suffered damage, a "module" could be swapped out at a suitable repair shop as opposed to a major rebuild or scrapping.
This was a far cry from the state of the British (and German) aviation businesses in 1938 where each plane was essentially a one-off custom, hand-fit item. The industry was essentially a soft-tooled industry at that point. Charles A. Lindberg surveyed the various European aviation concerns in '38 and was concerned that the Allied efforts weren't ready to gear up to large-scale production. Of course, Beaverbrook came in and changed all that, bringing in Henry Ford's assembly line and part interchangeability notions.
The Lancaster was a redesign of the Avro Manchester, which had engines that were typified by the Air Ministry as underdeveloped, unreliable, and under-powered. Then the big sweep came through demanding that all new designs be powered by the Merlin engine. They redesigned the wing center section to hold two Merlins per side and voile'! they had a great plane.
Because of cultural differences, that interchangeability concept was built in to the American aviation industry. A famous example is a B-17D calledThe Swoose at the National Museum of the USAF. It began life as a normal B-17D called Ole Betsy but was heavily damaged in action in the Pacific. At a repair depot in Australia the tail section of another B-17D was bolted on and the plane flew again. It was renamed after the subject of a popular song of the period about a bird that was half swan, half goose. Eventually it was tasked as the personal transport of General George Brett, flown by one Captain Frank Kurtz. When Brett was transferred it became the transport of Douglas MacAurthur. At the end of the war it was found to have fatigue in its wings and they were replaced by a pair from a salvaged B-17E and many of its systems were replaced with E systems.
Eventually it was stored and deteriorated. Two things came of it: A) Pilot Frank Kurtz named his daughter Swoozie after the plane and she became a famous actress. and B) the plane was eventually tuned over to the USAF Museum where it rests, mid-restoration. Progress is halted because there is controversy over which of its named iterations it really represents and which of its versions it should be restored to...
Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bob Womack
the big sweep came through demanding that all new designs be powered by the Merlin engine
Good point Bob and another interesting story. The Merlin was so vital to the war effort, that during the Battle of Britain in 1940 the UK sought alternative manufacturing facilities in Canada and the US.
Rolls-Royce settled on the Packard Motor Car Company because of their high quality and engineering. Negotiations were finalized in September 1940 and the first Packard-built engine, designated V-1650-1, came off the assembly line in August 1941. Many of the engines went to Canada to be installed in Hurricanes and Lancaster and Mosquito bombers.
Packard introduced a number of improvements to the engine, including General Motors' bearing technology and a Curtiss-Wright two-stage supercharger. The excellent performance of the engine led to its introduction into the P-40 L&F versions, and, most significantly displacing the Allison engine in the P-51 Mustang. It's a great example of British, Canadian, and American cooperation during the war.
Rolls engineers were quite astounded when they found Packard's quality standards and their previously untrained workforce of many women produced an engine that required, unlike the British built engines, virtually no hand fitting.
An perhaps it's no coincidence that two of the fastest Allied planes of WWII -- the Mustang and the Mosquito -- were powered by Merlins.
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That is an interesting thing about the Merlin story: the "home-grown" models seemed to "perform" better, at least for a while.
The reason is that they were HAND fitted; pistons selected for best fit to bores etc. Hideously time consuming, as opposed to the Packard "shake and bake" approach, which required incredibly fine tolerances on STANDARD production components and thus, on the assembly line, the engines just about fell together from standardized parts .
The RR "bespoke" jobs may have outperformed an "off the hook" Packard, but "ground-time" was somewhat greater and a rebuild was a MAJOR undertaking.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bob Womack
Because of cultural differences, that interchangeability concept was built in to the American aviation industry. A famous example is a B-17D calledThe Swoose at the National Museum of the USAF.
Bob
An example of interchangeability carried to an extreme was the DC-2 1/2.
Seems the right wing of a DC-3 was damaged by a Japanese bomb. There was a DC-2 wing available, it was bolted on the DC-3 and the DC-2 1/2 flew home.
CNAC's Famous DC-2 1/2
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'Right wing 5 feet shorter than the left'. I can't imagine what a b*st*rd that would be to trim to get it flying straight and level. Heaven forbid ever stalling it --- instant spin.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Paul S.
'Right wing 5 feet shorter than the left'. I can't imagine what a b*st*rd that would be to trim to get it flying straight and level. Heaven forbid ever stalling it --- instant spin.
Earnest Gann, author of 'Fate is the Hunter' flew the Hump in WW2 and mentioned this incident in the book. I seem to recall him saying they had a large monkey wrench clamped on the control column. They needed the extra leverage to control the thing.
'Fate is the Hunter' is an excellent book and well worth a read if you have not done so.
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Fate is the Hunter
Pic of my H/C 1st Ed. ~ Yes I have read this book twice and his flying experiences involved some very very shaky do's, in a DC-2 on the mail run with Ross when up-drafted putting their wheels down to slow the ascent in a cumulus nimbus in a gap that closed on them, taxiing the DC-2 and 3's which were rather contrite on the ground, Ross lighting matches in front of his eyes at night whilst trying to land a DC-2, icing up on the wings that from memory was 1/2" or so thick and the boots could not break it free with a plane load of passengers, the Taj Mahal incident with the radio antenae on board, the Hump, the Mare island incident and those spark plugs.
Scaring the hell out of the boffins who did not believe his story, the very dodgy Brazil trip to pick up a plane shooting the rats in the hotel rooms with a 45ACP (went through the walls) unknowingly solving the unporting of the elevator hinge pin that allowed the riddle to be solved a weight combination of fuel to passengers disembarked which saved their lives. And Solingen the wisest of Pelicans who had the coveted commercial license No.1. These are just a few examples of real fly by the seat of your pants. In Soligens words on one of Ernest's landings in a DC-2 as a trainee "That was not a landing, that was an arrival!"
The first few pages full of names bring it to the reader in blunt terms "For my old comrades (something to that affect) their wings forever folded" grab a copy it is well worth the read......Happy Xmas to all and a Good New Years to you and families. :wave::wave:
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Corsair photos
I appreciate you making these available. You did good!!
---------- Post added at 03:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:35 PM ----------
I appreciate your making these available. Good job!!
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When your process control is good there is no reason for hand fitting. All parts are within tolerance and they will fit without any monkey business. That is the purpose of good mechanical engineering and process control, you get optimum fits at minimum cost.
That is how the Ford Willow run factory built so many bombers. It was a 200 million dollar factory that from the beginning was designed to assemble the 4 engine B-24 bombers. The takt time of that factory was 57.6 minute per plane.
Here are some of the statistics: - 488,193 parts
- 30,000 components
- 24 Major subassemblies
- Peak production- 25 units per day
- 25,000 initial engineering drawings
- Ten model changes in six years
- Thousands of running changes
- 34,533 employees at peak
- 100% Productivity improvement
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
ireload2
That is how the Ford Willow run factory built so many bombers. It was a 200 million dollar factory that from the beginning was designed to assemble the 4 engine B-24 bombers. The takt time of that factory was 57.6 minute per plane.
Fascinating Information. To see how fast we could gear up for war 75 years ago is staggering. Could we be so focused, aligned, and committed today?
In one of my innovation programs I challenge engineers to "Construct a Ship at least 160 meters long"
- Must hold cargo of 12,500 tons
- Must have a speed of at least 16 knots
- Must be built in less than a week with unskilled labor
Seldom does any engineering team say they would even consider the task. I then show them how Wendy the Welder and Rosie the Riveter constructed Liberty Ships during WWII. Here's the record:
Robert E. Peary constructed in 4 days, 15 hours and 26 minutes
- Joint Venture between Todd Shipyards and Kaiser Shipbuilding
- Innovative time-cutting techniques incorporated
- Seventeen banks of welding machines on each side of the hull,
- Pre-assembly of the deck in seven sections instead of 23,
- Complete outfitting of the deckhouses, down to bunks, fans and flooring, before assembly.
More than 747 vessels built in the four Richmond Kaiser Shipyards during World War II, a feat not equaled anywhere else in the world, before or since.
"Wendy the Welders" allowed unskilled laborers to do repetitive jobs requiring relatively little training to accomplish, which opened up jobs to women & minorities
