Far removed from Beechcraft but some might find it interesting.

Everybody knows the original F4U-1 "birdcage" Corsair had poor visibility on final approach, hence the changes made to improve it in the -1A, notably the bubble top canopy and the seat raised several inches. What I hadn't realized is why it was designed so blind in the first place and it turns out, it wasn't. The original design was much better.

Compared to the production birds, the original X4U had:
-- motor mounts 4 1/2" shorter and
-- cockpit 32" farther forward
so together, over 3 feet less nose in front of the pilot to see over, and
-- double-slotted(!) flaps of greater span and
-- ailerons that drooped with the flaps
both of which would make for a more nose-down attitude on final. Combined with the shorter nose, the landing visibility would have been much better with the original design.

Drooping ailerons to fly as slow as possible in the landing configuration makes for a risky combination with a lot of propeller torque.

Without knowing what all went into the design considerations between the drawing board and the first production model, that would be a big question on my mind.

If you've never experienced a departure from controlled flight of a combination stall + torque roll, it's quite exciting- and fun, but only if you're at a safe altitude.


(I'm not saying any of this to disagree with your post, I'm just trying to add to the conversation.)

The Bf 109 also had drooped ailerons, that probably didn't help its dismal RLOC record.

The drooped ailerons on the Corsair made it into production but were dropped after a few hundred were built. The early Birdcage Corsair that Vultures Row is restoring should, by serial number, be one of those still built with the drooped ailerons. It will be interesting to see if they put them in.

The double-slotted flaps surprised me the most, I'm not aware of any other planes of that era that had them. I always thought of them as something that came in with thin and swept wings on jets.

I still haven’t heard what caused them to move the cockpit aft by 3 feet.

I was just reading about it. Apparently it needed more fuel, and the only place to put it was in a fuselage tank. They had to put the tank close to the CG, so they moved the cockpit back to accommodate it.

237 gallon self sealing rubber fuel cell sits between the firewall and the cockpit.
British Spitfire has fuel in the same place.
Early production F4U also had a leading edge tank built into the outer wings. During combat you could purge the tanks with CO2 to reduce the fire hazard.

F4U fuel system image grabbed from a manual in the Aircorpslibrary.com collection.

"Whistling Death" by Boone Guyton (Corsair test pilot) is a pretty good read if you want to learn about all things Corsair.

Also by moving the cockpit back it inadvertently made the plane faster. They kind of stumbled on to the area rule of aircraft design. It allowed the drag curve to be spread out and not all concentrated at the wing/fuselage intersection.

Change in armament forced moving the fuel into the fuselage from the wings.

The original armament, never installed on the prototype, was to be 2x0.30" guns in the cowling and 2x0.50" guns, one in each wing. Plus internal bays in the wings to carry mini aerial bombs to drop on formations of enemy bombers, a capability required by the Navy. (Maybe that didn't sound so crazy in 1938.) Fuel was in four wing tanks, a large main tank and a leading edge tank in each wing, none of them self-sealing.

Reports coming back after the shooting started in Europe changed the Navy's thinking. The bomb bays in the wings went away. The guns changed to 6x0.50", all in the wings, taking up the space where the main wing tanks had been, so they were replaced with a single large self-sealing fuselage tank of the same capacity, 237 gallons, over the CG, between the engine and cockpit. That pushed the cockpit back 32".

As Rich said, early production planes kept the (non-self-sealing) leading edge aux tanks but those went away later after the ability to carry drop tanks was added.

Vulture’s Row just posted a Facebook update a few days ago with pics of the progress on the -1 Corsair. From the looks of the intricate parts being produced, I would guess that the droop ailerons will be operational.

Guyton's book outlines the hot mess that was getting the Corsair in fighting shape. Despite all the aggravation, when it did arrive, it was a formidable fighting machine. I still love this passage about Ike Kepford's epic tangle on February 19, 1944 from Tom Blackburn's Jolly Rogers. To me, it demonstrates the physical toll of fighting in these machines and shows off the capabilities of the airplane when flown by talented pilots:

Max has probably been gone west over twenty years.

He flew in the WWII pacific theater and then a long career with The airlines.

Rumor had it that he had a collection of WWII memorabilia that he liked to show fellow pilots….and much of it centered on the corsair.

I’m sad that I couldn’t find the time to see his stuff.

That said I did talk to him some about his service on more than one occasion.

I don’t remember his exact words but it was something to the effect….
“The Corsair was a great airplane, we had confidence in it, we could take on the zero’s and win.” Iirc he had been in Wildcats previously.

His face lit up…as he talked…about a machine that got him through the battles and home safely.


Leldon

My Great Uncle - Frank Cooper - invented the self-sealing tanks while working for Goodyear in Akron.

My Great Uncle - Frank Cooper - invented the self-sealing tanks while working for Goodyear in Akron.