F4u wings

Excellent points James! I do know that in the early stages of the Korean War, Corsair pilots attacking ground targets were experiencing an unexpected tendency of the fighter to roll on pullout. This was finally attributed to warped wooden ailerons, and was solved by their replacement.

It’s an interesting question, and fascinating though some of the comments have been, I’m still not sure why Vought chose the wing construction they did.

I’m still curious as to the specific rationale, as it was anachronistic for the time* and the specific design, and is one throwback in an aircraft structure that was very innovative** and forward looking in other areas.

Maybe it saved weight, but how much, and to how much benefit against a stressed skin structure? It seems more a design ‘blind spot’ or undeveloped element, rather than a thought-through option, to me. Were there other, new, fighters in service in 1943 with an equivalent fabric covered area?

There’s been some red herrings, IMHO.

Wooden structures – particularly wooden skinning are not a meaningful comparison, as they are stressed and effective in completely different ways to fabric covering – specifically the possible compression loadings being diametrically opposed.

The Hurricane was I’d suggest a significantly earlier generation design (1935, as against 1940) and the type of fabric covering on the early Hurricane wings was chosen, I think, to simplify early production and get the machines into service quicker by carrying forward the ‘standard’ Hawker biplane engineering practice. Hawker’s Hart, Fury and early Hurricane have unusual fabric covering on the wings as it’s laid diagonally, unlike most (all?) other (less stressed?) fabric coverings. Secondly, the method of retaining the fabric on Hurricane’s wing with external ‘stringers’ to hold the fabric down, shows, I think, a late discovery of an over-stretch to this Hawker’s carry forward of Hart/Fury principles.

And Hawker replaced the fabric covered wing as soon as possible, while the Corsair went through the whole of its W.W.II with the part-fabric wing; which is why I have a problem with the statement – often repeated – that it was the ‘earlier marks’ only, whereas it was actually the main production and service marks.

However the Corsair’s fabric covering was more conventional in its application, as I understand it, and only covered a smaller area of the wing, critically only aft of the mainspar and only the outer section, and after armament changes to the prototype, I suspect was cut back from the original area for the required (metal) armament panels. In sense, it had the benefits – and was similar to – the control surface fabric covering over a metal structure on most types of the period, and was later ‘metalized’ rather as the Spitfire’s ailerons were and many (previously fabric-covered) US aircraft were in the 1950s – 70s.

I assume the Corsair would’ve been the fastest prototype fighter ever to have fabric covering – unless anyone knows otherwise?

Questions, questions…

Regards,

*Any other exact contemporary US designs using fabric in such a way?
**The gull wing is the best example of the innovative thinking, contrasted with the innovative but dud wing cells for light bombs to bomb enemy bomber formations with in the original design and prototype(!). Also Rex Biesel’s team, in cooperation with the Naval Aircraft Factory came up with a new spot welding system for the fuselage structure making an exceptionally ‘smooth external finish’ – why not carry that over to the wing where the airflow’s arguably more important?

Thanks, folk. I had forgotten how long the gestation period was for the Corsair. As to being obsolescent – I am not decrying its effectiveness, but fabric wings were obsolescent by 1938, never mind later. Spitfire, Bf109, etc.
Mike

In 1945 the Germans were using wooden rudders on the 109 and wooden flaps on the FW190. Cheap and quick because the whole aircraft lasted about 5 minutes.

Thanks, folk. I had forgotten how long the gestation period was for the Corsair. As to being obsolescent – I am not decrying its effectiveness, but fabric wings were obsolescent by 1938, never mind later. Spitfire, Bf109, etc.
Mike

You might want to bear in mind that Vought was awarded the contract to build the Corsair in 1938, and the prototype flew in 1940. So it really wasn’t that much later than the Hurricane, especially as far as pre-war technology is concerned. The advances made by the aviation industry once it was totally embroiled in the war are quite staggering. Hence, the Corsair was able to later benefit from that.

Reading one of my model magazines, I was surprised the read in an artcile about a Corsair that the full size had fabric covered outer wing panels. Assuming some sort of misprint I checked, only to discover that it was correct. Given that the Hurricane started life with fabric covered wings but soon switched to metal, I was really surprised to hear this about the much later, much more highly powered, Corsair. Any idea why it should have adopted such apparently obsolescent technology?
Mike

All of the WWII Corsair marques had fabric covered outer wing panels. They had wooden ailerons as well. The early -1 and -1A variants had fabric covered outer wing flaps too. This was all done to save weight. Considering how effective the corsair was in combat, I’d hardly say the technology was obsolescent…

Cheers,
Richard

I believe only the earlier marks had fabric outer wing covering.

“Until the dash 5, the outer top wing panels and the control surfaces of the Corsair had been fabric covered. At speed, the fabric tended to deform and slow the aircraft by a few miles per hour. The F4U-5 had all fabric surfaces replaced with sheet duralumin to minimize this problem.”

Extract from this website: http://www.aviation-history.com/vought/f4u.html