Could someone please point me to threads discussing the basics of flying the Corsair in AH? Forum search tends to return stuff from 10 years ago.
Thanks in advance, MH
TDeacon,
Well lets make it easier and start a discussion here. First and formemost when looking at any aircraft you want to fight in, is you have to determine it's strengths and weaknesses. Removing the -4 from the equation, the corsair has two glaring weaknesses, climb and acceleration. It's strengths, great flaps!, great Rudder, well above average roll, high top speed, and very stable at high speed dives. So you want to limit your exposure of your weak spots, while setting yourself up to use your advantages. Always try to come into a fight high and fast, and be stubborn about keeping your alt in a fight. If you go down you'll have a hard time getting back up there and a lot of the planeset is better fighting up hill then you are. Use you initial high speed to work the verticle against your opponent, force him to fight up to you. Corsair has great flaps that start to deploy at 250mph, use this to your advantage. I teach my guys to normally drag the fight up and drain the bogey of E and use the corsair great low speed handling to roll into their opponent once they start to lose control authority while the Corsair still has its. If the bogey sees they are losing the fight and dives away the Corsair dives well and more importantly it handles well up into the 500 range, it does stiffen up but it's far better then most. Defensively, the Corsairs bread and butter is the rolling scissors, it excells at it. Most experiences sticks won't get into a rolling scissors with an experienced Corsair pilot, even I won't with most other aircraft against a good Corsair pilot. Nothing can hit the breaks like a Corsair in a roll, the ability to drop gear, drop flaps at 250, and the huge barn door rudder, make it deadly in a rolling scissors. Now that I brought the gear issue up, let me say that I only use it in a very narrow window, namely I just over cooked something or I misjudged speed by quite a bit and I'm outside of that 250mph to get in my flaps to slow myself down. Once in flaps my gear is always retracted (unless landing of course
). This is a super basic overview of F4U tactics.
What makes the exceptional Corsair pilot over your average joe pilot in here is, E management. Now Why is E management so important in this aircraft? Simple, most of it's strength's, are also huge drags on the airframe. The big flaps and big Rudder, cause a lot of drag when used, so they are a double edged sword. Especially in an aircraft that doesn't accelerate well to gain that E back rapidly. So as you learn to fight the Corsair properly, you learn to use only what is needed, when it's needed. Anything more is wasting speed. So you tend to wear on your flap buttons a lot, as you are constantly deploying or retracting as you fight so you only have the right amount out at any one time. Same with the rudder, you tend to use it in short bursts. This is what drives students batty, in the fact I'm able to retain so much E in a fight even though we both started CO-alt/E, they are still trying to find that line of how much flap/rudder/throttle is needed at any one point. As all of my past students will tell you, this is the hardest part to learn, and one of the hardest things for me to teach.
BigRat
