Eighty-six years ago today, on the morning of 29 May 1940, Vought-Sikorsky senior test pilot Lyman Bullard Jr. pushed the throttle of an experimental fighter prototype called the XF4U-1, rolled down the runway at Bridgeport Municipal Airport in Connecticut, and entered aviation history. The Corsair was airborne.

It would go on to become one of the most successful, most recognisable, and most beloved fighters of the entire Second World War.

The Wing That Solved an Impossible Problem

The Corsair’s signature inverted gull wing was not an aesthetic choice. It was an engineering necessity. Vought’s chief designer Rex Beisel had committed to a fighter built around the most powerful radial engine in production — the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, producing 2,000 horsepower. That engine needed an enormous propeller — over 4 metres in diameter — to convert its power into thrust efficiently.

A 4-metre propeller, mounted on a conventional low-wing fighter, would either drag on the runway or require an absurdly long landing gear. Beisel solved the problem with geometry. By bending the wings downward at the root and then back up at the outer panels, he could mount the landing gear at the lowest point of the wing — keeping the legs short and strong while clearing the propeller.

The result was unmistakable. No other fighter looked anything like the Corsair. Pilots called it “the bent-wing bird.” Japanese pilots called it something less affectionate.

“I learned quickly that altitude was paramount. Whoever had altitude dictated the terms of the battle. The F4U could outperform a Zero in every aspect except slow speed manoeuvrability and slow speed rate of climb. Of my 21 victories, 17 were against Zeros, and I lost five aircraft in combat.”
— 1st Lt. Ken Walsh, USMC, first Corsair ace and Medal of Honor recipient

First Flight, First Records

Bullard’s first flight lasted less than 40 minutes, and it proceeded normally until the elevator trim tabs failed because of flutter, forcing a hurried landing. Five months later, on 1 October 1940, the same prototype averaged 405 miles per hour on a flight from Stratford to Hartford, making the Corsair the first US single-engine fighter to fly faster than 400 mph.

That speed alone was a generational leap. The Curtiss P-40, then the US Army’s frontline fighter, topped out around 360 mph. The Spitfire Mk II was barely faster.

The Trouble With Carriers

The Corsair was designed for the US Navy, which intended to operate it from aircraft carriers. That intention ran into trouble. The long nose blocked forward visibility during the approach. The narrow-track landing gear made deck landings tricky. Early carrier trials in 1942 were a disaster. The US Navy initially refused to qualify the Corsair for fleet carriers, sending it instead to the US Marine Corps for land-based operations in the Pacific.

It was the Marines who turned the Corsair into a legend. From Guadalcanal forward, Corsair pilots claimed an 11-to-1 kill ratio against Japanese aircraft. The Royal Navy, less risk-averse than the US Navy, qualified the type for carrier operations almost immediately and proved it could work.

“Being the first unit to go into action in the Corsair, we didn’t know exactly how to employ it, so we had to establish a doctrine.”
— Ken Walsh on VMF-124’s combat debut with the Corsair at Guadalcanal, February 1943

A Long, Long Career

Corsair production continued until 1953 — eight years after the war that made it famous ended. The aircraft flew combat in Korea, fought in the Football War between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969, and remains in airshow service today in the hands of dozens of warbird operators.

Eighty-six years after Bullard’s first flight, the Corsair is still flying, still drawing crowds, and still recognisable from half a kilometre away by that bent silhouette and the unmistakable whistle of air through its wing root inlets. Few aircraft have earned such a long second life.

Sources: Vintage Aviation News, US Navy Historical Center, Naval Aviation Museum archives.