I was standing next to my bright blue baby, all 12,000 pounds of her. Capable of 440 knots running flat out, she cruised at 227 knots. 41 feet long, 33 feet wide and 15 feet tall, she had a Pratt and Whitney Wasp double radial engine that cranked out 2,300 horsepower. My hand slid over the cool metal of her belly. I was smiling. She was mine now. I had just signed the transfer of ownership, the money had been wired to an escrow company, and I was ready to fly her home.
She was an F4U-4 Corsair, maybe the best U.S. fighter that flew in World War II. Yeah, even better then the more famous P-51 Mustang. The Corsair was faster, more nimble, climbed faster, and carried more payload than the Mustang. Plus, she could fly off of a carrier and flew slower and warned of a stall before the stall. The P-51, however, gave no warning of an impending stall. When it did stall, it was with a total loss of pilot control, rolling inverted with a severe aileron snatch. Recovery usually used up 500 feet or more of altitude. It was not uncommon for Mustangs to spin out of tight turns during dogfights. The Corsair could also be flown at speeds more than 30 mph slower than that at which the Mustang stalled. In other words, the P-51 could not hope to follow a Corsair in a low speed turning fight. Rated to carry a 2,000 pound payload, Lindberg flew a Corsair on a bombing mission with a 2,000 pound bomb under centerline and two 1,000 pound bombs under the wings; twice what was supposed to be the maximum payload. Hell, the B-17 heavy bomber was designed to carry 4,800 pounds of bombs and there are reports of Corsairs carrying 6,000 pounds of ordnance.
This particular plane had rolled off the assembly line during the war and saw plenty of action. She had then been flown by the Marines as a ground support plane in Korea. The previous owner had her restored her to WWII configuration, including the flags with a big Red Sun under the cockpit for the kills. He had proudly opened the wing panels to show me how all of the equipment was there. All I had to do was bolt in the machine guns, put in the ammo, and this baby was ready to rock and roll. The man who was selling had lost his medical for his pilot’s license and was close to tears having to give up his baby. His wife looked pleased. He had sold me all of the accessories he had. We had put the two drop tanks on it for the flight home. The rest would have to be shipped. With all that fuel I could make the flight in one hop, but it was going to be a long day.
I climbed up the side of the plane and settled into the cockpit. God, but she was beautiful. I started the engine; cowlings open at ¾, and felt the power of the beast in the deep rumble coming through the seat. Here on the ground, the powerful engine noises bounced off the concrete and back to the belly of the plane. I ran my hands over the stick, before saluting the folks on the ground and starting to taxi towards the runway. It was a small field and I was the only one on the taxiways at the time. At the end of the runway, I ran up the engine watching all of the gauges. They looked fine. I retarded fuel and watched again. All normal. A quick burst of power and I turned onto the runway.
I closed the canopy, gave a final look at the gauges, and thrust the throttle forward. The RPM jumped to 2,700 as the beast started moving down the runway. The tail lifted as soon as I was moving and I was able to see forward as the big engine settled. Before I knew it, the plane felt light and the Corsair practically flew herself off of the runway. The plane seemed to spring into the air, the big four-bladed prop clawing at the air.
The Corsair’s unusual gull wing design was forced on the designers in order to get that big propeller high enough off the ground. I knew I was no longer flying a Cessna. The wheels came up as the ground fell away. I turned west and smiled as my Corsair, mine, I savored that thought, climbed into the blue sky. The indicated air speed was 125 knots, the Corsair’s best climb speed. In less than two minutes, I leveled off at 8,500 feet. I retarded the throttle, set the mixture to auto-lean, set the blower to neutral, manifold pressure to 29 inches, and watched as the airspeed gauge settled at the cruise speed of 227 knots. At this speed and settings, the Corsair burned about seventy-five gallons of fuel an hour turning the prop at 675 rpm through a 2 to 1 reduction gear.
As I set the throttle, I remembered watching a World War II training video, How to Fly the Corsair. It was the only training available. In it, the narrator was running through various settings and said of maximum endurance cruise that the Corsair will, ‘hum along like a sewing machine.’ I had to laugh now. I was really aware that I wasn’t flying a Cessna anymore. The Corsair was a warrior. This wasn’t a sewing machine. Planes had flown back to their base with whole cylinders blown off the engine. She was tough. But it required that the pilot really fly the plane, constantly adjusting settings that on modern planes were automatic. It made for a more challenging flight, but it also made me feel that I was really flying a plane, not a Volkswagen with wings. I smiled and settled back, letting the plane fly on. I had a five hour flight in front of me.
I checked the Navigation computer which was GPS enabled. It showed the track of the plane so far. I had covered 15 of the scheduled 1,162.5 miles at a flight time of 5 hours, 7 minutes. Before I took delivery of the plane I had the latest avionics installed, including a Garmin GPS with color screen and satellite weather. Weather was fine all of the way. In an hour, I’d have to climb to get over the Rockies. The highest elevation along my track was 12,270 feet. It isn’t good to be lower than the terrain. Running into the side of a mountain is not good for the airplane, or the pilot. I’d need to be higher than that. That wouldn’t be a problem in a Corsair with a ceiling of 41,000 feet. One other thing I had updated was the oxygen system. Nothing worse than running out of air when you needed it. The original oxygen system, if you could call it a system, was two seperate tanks of oxygen with an imperfect control system. Pilots used to take off their gloves at high altitude and watch the cuticle to see if they turned blue indicating the oxygen system wasn’t working properly. There was no other way to know with the old system.
As I crossed the state border, I started a gradual climb. I added throttle to climb, intercooler flaps open, high blower. Once at 13,500 feet, I had to leave the blower at high, add another half inch of manifold pressure and set the mixture to auto-rich. The Corsair wasn’t quite as fuel efficient above 13,500 feet but the plane still wasn’t using that much fuel, leveling off at 14,500 feet. I had to put on the mask as any flying above 10,000 should be on oxygen. I probably wouldn’t pass out even if I wasn’t wearing a mask. It wasn’t any higher than the observatory on Pike’s Peak, but, that big but… There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots. But there aren’t any old bold pilots. I’d rather be an old pilot. Flight rules have always been learned at a dear cost.
The Rockies reared up below me. The ride got a little bumpy from the wind boiling up off of the peaks. Imagine the biggest roller coaster you have ever been on, then imagine being on it for an hour. I didn’t lose my lunch, but there were a few times…
The flight settled out as I hit the high desert plateaus. The hard part of the flight now was staying awake. I kept the nose pointed towards home, and kept the altitude and speed on target. I checked the computer: two minutes ahead of schedule. They don’t build war birds with auto-pilots, so I had to fly the plane continuously. It was physically tiring on a long hop like this one as well as mentally draining.
You have a lot of time to think while flying long distances over desolate places. My mind wandered a little as I looked down on the barren reaches of desert below. One thing you have to do is keep the scan going. The scan has to be almost automatic. You check the instruments to make sure nothing unusal is happening, then you start looking outside for other planes. It isn't a sweep from side to side. You have to stop and look, then move your eyes and stop again. A constant sweep will miss those small dots that at a closing rate of several hundred miles an hour can grow to big airplanes really fast.
People live in Utah and Nevada, but you do have to wonder why. I followed a main highway for a while and saw occasional buildings, even a ‘town,’ if you could call a cluster of dirty buildings in the middle of nowhere a town. Occasionally, a dirt road would lead off into the desert to a lone building or trailer. I’d wonder about the person living there. What had they done in a prior life to earn this kind of a life? Maybe one of those lone buildings was a brothel. Nevada is the only state civilized enough to legalize sex between consenting adults. But they did make the brothels set up out in the desert. Sex is okay only if it’s hidden. Lord, but Americans are backwards.
Soon, I could see the wall of the Sierra Nevada rising up out of the tawny brown of the Nevada desert. The other side of that was home. As I crossed the mountains I saw Lake Tahoe off to the right and Yosemite off to the left. I made up my mind that my first flight in this new plane would be to Yosemite. Maybe I’d scream down the valley at 400 knots. That would be exciting.
The mountains fell away and I began a gradual descent. At 10,000 feet, I took off the mask, glad to breathe air that didn’t taste of rubber. I could see Sacramento ahead of me. I was tired, but concentrated on landing. The Corsair had been built as a fighter and was a series of compromises, as in all fighter aircraft, agility comes at the expense of stability. The power to run like the wind also made for problems. The engine was so powerful that applying power too quickly on landing could actually torque the whole plane. Pilots had flipped their birds over by hitting full throttle during a landing and there aren’t any wheels on the top of a plane. I had watched training films for the Mustang and the P-47, the P-47 actually used the same engine as the Corsair, and both had warned of the same thing; driving a wing into the ground with the torque of the powerful engine.
I called in for landing and got on glide. I lowered the gear and extended flaps. The plane slowed and the controls got a little mushy. Nice thing about the plane; it had been designed to land on carriers, so the designer built it to fly slowly and the stall was not sharp. It wouldn’t just fall out of the sky. On a Corsair approaching stall, the whole left wing would start to shudder like crazy while it was still six knots above stall. That should get a pilot’s attention to add power.
The big engine hid much of the forward view on landing. In the 4 and later versions, they had raised the pilot’s seat and angled the nacelle down to give the pilot a better view, but that beast still blocked much of the forward view. I hit further down the runway than usual for me, but being slow, it didn’t matter. I taxied to my new hanger. I had to trade up when I decided to buy the Corsair. My old hanger, big enough for the Cessna, would have been wide enough, but that big prop would never have gone in. The new hanger, with a tall door, was twice as wide as I needed. It would make putting the plane away easy. I stopped in front of the hanger and cut the switches. Home.
As I climbed down and stretched, I saw several friends coming. They knew when I was scheduled back with my new baby and they had come by. They ran their hands over it, looking everywhere. There is something about the old war birds, some romance that holds us, connects us with their past, the stories, the glories that they represent. I smiled as I looked at their faces, open with wonderment, just as mine had been on this first flight.
I was tooling around over Napa on a Saturday afternoon some weeks later when it hit me: I had the range to fly this plane around the world. It would be a stretch; some of the hops would be long and over open ocean. I’d have to put the fuel tanks back on even though they added drag. The flight manual range chart said the bird had a 1,600 nautical mile ferry range with tanks. Weather could make those hops not only difficult but dangerous as well. When the military hopped those planes across the ocean they always flew in pairs. Lone pilots could become subject to disorientation and fly the plane right into the drink.
But the thought of doing it, flying around the world, just wouldn’t leave me. That night I got on the Internet and started exploring possibilities. By the time I was done, I had a tentative flight plan. The longest hop was 1,606 miles and 7 hours of flying time. That was the Naka Shibetsu to Adak hop. I’d have to do it in summer. Winter weather would make those trans-oceanic jumps way too dangerous if not impossible. Using the official Navy charts, the 1,600 mile ferry range still left me one hour reserve fuel. But there wasn’t anything within an hour of Adak so I’d have to be certain before I hopped. Back on the Internet and I was checking visa requirements, getting maps ordered, hotels, and finally entertainment. The decision was easy. Until the weather got better I could plan and get clearances. I could also practice long range flying, just to make sure I knew what I was doing. I also wanted to make sure I could fly the Corsair without thinking about it, handling the various controls and settings automatically. Oh yeah, I wanted to make sure could really fly that ferry range and have fuel left.
I also thought one day about those guns. I’d be in pretty wild areas at times. It was stupid, I realized, to think I’d fight my way out of trouble with 50 calibers, but it did make me feel better. So I applied for permits to the ATF. Yeah, I know, it ought to be the FAA, but ATF handles permits for machine guns. I registered as a collector, bought six 50 caliber guns and ammo, and had them installed. I wasn’t really supposed to do this, but I did go out over Nevada and practiced a little. There are a couple hill tops in Nevada that have been beaten up. The nice thing is, if you fly close to the military training sites but not in them people blame the military jets for those sounds. Those guns make quite a racket.
She was an F4U-4 Corsair, maybe the best U.S. fighter that flew in World War II. Yeah, even better then the more famous P-51 Mustang. The Corsair was faster, more nimble, climbed faster, and carried more payload than the Mustang. Plus, she could fly off of a carrier and flew slower and warned of a stall before the stall. The P-51, however, gave no warning of an impending stall. When it did stall, it was with a total loss of pilot control, rolling inverted with a severe aileron snatch. Recovery usually used up 500 feet or more of altitude. It was not uncommon for Mustangs to spin out of tight turns during dogfights. The Corsair could also be flown at speeds more than 30 mph slower than that at which the Mustang stalled. In other words, the P-51 could not hope to follow a Corsair in a low speed turning fight. Rated to carry a 2,000 pound payload, Lindberg flew a Corsair on a bombing mission with a 2,000 pound bomb under centerline and two 1,000 pound bombs under the wings; twice what was supposed to be the maximum payload. Hell, the B-17 heavy bomber was designed to carry 4,800 pounds of bombs and there are reports of Corsairs carrying 6,000 pounds of ordnance. 