Chance Vought F-4U „Corsair” – the American deck fighter

The revolutionary design of the F4U “Corsair “was developed in 1938 in response to a request from the U.S. Navy to design a high-speed fighter, that was to be based on aircraft carriers. Chance Vought took on the challenge of fitting the most powerful engine available (the Pratt-Whitney “Double Wasp”) into the smallest possible fuselage. The key was to incorporate the clumsy landing gear into an inverted, seagull-type wing, which became the hallmark of the aircraft. The first flight of the prototype took place on May 29, 1940, and the U.S. Navy received its first serial “Corsair” on July 31, 1942. However, tests carried out by the U.S. Navy on aircraft carriers revealed some design flaws, resulting in the first series of aircraft entering the Marine Corps squadrons and being operated from land bases. The first unit, who receive the F-4, was the VMF-124 Squadron in Gudalcanal. It soon became clear, that the new machine was definitely superior to all enemy machines and, in some respects, the F-6 “Hellcat”. At the same time, however, it was very difficult to pilot and required a lot of attention during the landing. Interestingly, only up to 20% of “Corsair” missions took off from the decks of aircraft carriers, and for most of the war they remained the main fighter of the Marine Corps. After the end of World War II, the F-4 “Corsair” remained in service and took part in the Korean War (1950-1953).

The medium complex fighter model recovers the F-4U from the “Bunker Hill” aircraft carrier. Even a little experienced modeler, working under the supervision of a more experienced colleague, can assemble this model, but there are their own "goats" - it is quite difficult to mount the wing to the fuselage. It details practically everything, that is in a real plane - the interior of the cockpit, machine gun, landing gear, its niches, engine and other details. Assembly is complicated by incomplete graphical instructions. The publication is completed with a 1 mm thick cardboard sheet.