... a WW2 Marine pilot eating breakfast in the local cafe.
My wife and I had rolled into Avon Park for the races at Sebring. The hotel didn't serve a breakfast so we mosied over to a cafe across the street. As we're sitting there I notice a man sitting alone across the way from us and after he finishes his food he picks up his hat. Printed on the front is an F4U Corsair, and on either side are two gold pins - 1 is the Marine Corps emblem and the other is a set of aviator wings.
I ask him about the hat and he mentions that he was in the Solomons in '43-'44 flying bird-cage Corsairs. I tell him that I'm a lifetime member of the air museum in Lakeland and we get to talking about the plane, his opinions of some writers, and other things. Some interesting tidbits:
- The Navy trained him in aerial gunnery using a towed target sleeve. When his brother went through Army gunnery training a little later ('44), his brother learned gunnery using cameras.
- Corky Meyer complains about how the earlier Corsairs had no floors, so if you dropped something there was no way to pick it up. The vet I was talking to pointed out the critical flaw in this complaint - if he dropped something, he simply rolled the plane inverted and picked it up off the canopy.
- The reason why the Corsair flew for the Navy after the war and the Hellcat didn't was because Grumman had transitioned its production to Bearcats and Tigercats before war's end, whereas the Corsair was produced by different manufacturers under license (Goodyear and Brewster) up until the end. Of the Brewster, Goodyear, and Chance-Vought builds of the Corsairs, the Brewster was the more inconsistent - he never knew if the plane would be a dog or not.
- The Marines got the Corsair before the Navy boys did because the Marines were land based and the early Corsairs had problems with carrier suitability. The short tailwheel caused the plane to sit in a natural stalled position during take-off, causing the engine torque to throw it over to the left. When Tom Blackburn's Jolly Rogers arrived at his base, he got a chance to fly the new D model. The Jolly Rogers went to the Marines' land bases not because the D wasn't carrier-qualified, but because the Marine Corps had been flying Corsairs and had the equipment to maintain the D planes.
- There's a tendency for some authors to manufacture ideas and opinions about the plane and the war in an attempt to make a name for themselves and sell their books. He has respect for Corky Meyer's work, but some of the other writers are suspect. He mentioned a couple of names right off (including a Japanese-
American author) and some specific examples, but I've forgotten them. If I remember, I'll post here.
Anyway, he had a golf tee time he had to catch and I wanted to get to the track before the lines formed at the gates. I probably couldn't talked with him for another hour or so. Hopefully our paths will cross again. There's a fly-in coming in Lakeland in a couple of weeks so maybe I'll see him there.
