On the Wings of a Corsair: A CoNA Celebration

Proof strip from
a Corsair flight.

Our photographer's wingman waves in the one snapshot

view not included in  proofstrip on the right.

As 2011, and the Centennial of Naval Aviation (CoNA) both draw to a close, I've decided to honor the grand tradition of Naval Aviation with a look back at an almost forgotten Navy aircraft, and the Naval Aviators who flew them.

Mention the name "Vought Corsair", and the distinctive gull-wing design of the F4U comes to mind to almost anyone who has even a passing knowledge of Naval Aviation - it's an association that has become so iconic, that the original Vought Corsair, the O2U of the 1920s is all but forgotten. In fact, the F4U eclipsed the O2U so completely, that when the name "Corsair" was resurrected for the Vought A-7 in the 1960s, that version was dubbed the "Corsair II", instead of the "III" that it should have been.

Almost 600 of the original Corsairs were built, and they saw extensive service with the Navy as well as a number of friendly nations. Responding to specs issued by the Navy in 1925 (only 14 years after the birth of Naval Aviation!), Vought came up with the first aircraft to be specifically designed around the new Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engine; the first aircraft was delivered in 1926. Though originally conceived of as an observation aircraft, the design quickly was recognized for its versatility, and the Corsair could be deployed as a land plane or fitted with amphibious floats. In short order, the Vought Corsair owned several world speed and altitude records, which helped bring public notice - and that of the military forces of a number of other countries, who lined up to buy the planes. For their age, the Corsairs saw a long service life, with one Coast Guard aircraft remaining in service until January 1940.

In real life, the proof strip pictured at the top is a mere

inch wide.

Given the small size of the proof print, the resulting image

would naturally be expected to lack a lot of detail.

Today's set of photos (a proof-strip and a one separate snapshot) give us a remarkably personal look, through the lens of one of the crewmen, at one particular multi-ship flight of Corsairs. Both wingmen and themselves are the subjects of interest in these photos.

The memories of this flight, preserved almost by chance for posterity, ended up in a dusty album for decades, forgotten like the Corsairs themselves. But history, in this case a century's worth of Naval Aviation history, is made of nothing more that countless small moments like this, all strung together, so it seems most fitting to honor the past 100 years, and the men and women who lived it, in this way. To those who served, I am deeply grateful. To those who will write the next 100 years of Navy history, my son included, I salute you, and wish you blue skies and blue seas. AR.

The First Liberator

Today's photo starts a new series of press-release wirephotos which originally came from the St. Petersburg Times and which were recently acquired by MojaveWest. For those unfamiliar with wirephotos, they were essentially faxes, with the technology having been developed in the 1920s and 1930s (a fascinating article from Popular Science in 1935 about the technology can be found here). The amazing thing about wirephotos is that they were able to produce high-quality photo prints transmitted across old-fashioned telephone lines, decades before fax machines became popular - and the typical fax quality doesn't even come close to the image clarity that wirephotos have, as you can see here.

This is a tale about what happens when someone has a better idea than what was proposed, and doesn’t give up when that idea fails to meet expectations the first time around; it’s a story which demonstrates that a superior idea will win out in the end, and really can exceed the original expectations. It's also a demonstration that you can't always trust media releases to be accurate. But, since we're telling the stories behind the photos, let's at least look at the photo first:

The official caption accompanying this wonderful old image reads, "ARMY'S NEW SUPER BOMBER TESTED

SAN DIEGO, CAL. - The Army Air Corps' new bombardment plane, technically known as the XB-24, pictured after completing initial test flights at Lindbergh Field, San Diego. The four-motored plane, of all-metal construction, is capable of a speed of 300 miles an hour and a range of approximately 3,000 miles and a bomb carrying capacity of approximately 4 tons. It has high wings with a span of 110 feet. The motors are 18 cylinder, twin row radials, air-cooled. The propellers are three-bladed and 12 feet in diameter. A crew of six to nine men will fly the ship, which was built by the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation. Credit line (ACME) 2/12/40."



Dittoed caption pasted to the back

Not so fast! The numbers touted to the public weren't even close. That's where the "fails the first time" aspect of our moral comes in, and to understand that, we need to look at the "better idea" part. In 1938, the Army Air Corps needed more B-17 Flying Fortresses, and they needed them faster, so they approached company officials at Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego, to inquire about the ability of that company to crank out B-17s under license. But the Consolidated folks decided that they could do the Army one better, and offer a bigger, faster and longer reach bomber for the same effort - a belief which resulted in the Model 32, designed around twin bomb bays, each one having the capacity of a B-17. Intrigued, the Air Corps issued a set of specifications in January 1939, designed so that the Model 32 - redesignated the XB-24 - would be an automatic winner, and then invited Consolidated to submit a design. It was from this specification that the numbers in the press release text quoted above were derived.

After its first flight on December 29, 1939, it became apparent that the XB-24 fell quite short of the goals. Rather than the specified 311mph, the plane could, full bore, eek out a mere 273mph top speed. There were other issues, as well. The aircraft was redesigned with different engines and a slightly changed tail, and re-christened the XB-24B, with a bit more success. Even so, the top speed never met the specs...being listed for production aircraft at 290mph. Instead of a 3,000 mile range, it could only go 2,100 miles, and that only when empty. When loaded with the four tons of bombs that the press release touted, its range was a measly 400 miles!

Even so, it was considered one of the most successful aircraft designs of the war, and 18,482 aircraft were produced (compared to only 12,731 B-17s). At peak production, B-24s were pumped out at a rate of one aircraft per hour!

In 1944, the now-XB-24B was modified to be used by Consolidated as a VIP transport, an assignment which didn't last long. On June 20, 1946, this historic aircraft was unceremoniously scrapped at Brookley Field, in Mobile, Alabama.

Alaska wrecks, Part 3: Liberator Down

For Part 3 of the Alaska series, we have this sad, tailless B-24 to consider. Other than the obvious "20" on the nose, I can detect no other markings, and so this plane's identity and location - other than it being in Alaska - is a mystery.

The salvage crew that the photographer was a member of has clearly been hard at work, note the chains laid out on the ground in front of the aircraft, and scaffolding of sorts has been erected alongside the aft fuselage. The #3 engine in missing completely, and the #4 appears to have sheared off the prop shaft.

As always, if you have information on the story behind this bird and its ignominious fate, please comment below!

Valkyrie Coming

After the last few posts on North American Aviation's B-25 Mitchells, it seemed appropriate to jump to this press release wirephoto of what was arguably North American's technological apex: the XB-70 Valkyrie. It was a mere 25 years from the inception of the B-25 program to the first flight of the XB-70, but the two aircraft represent an almost unfathomable leap in technology (for comparison, it's been 15 years from the inception of the JSF program to where we are in just flight test for the F-35 family).

For those who think that the political controversies over the F-22 and F-35 programs are something new, the XB-70 program is testament that they aren't. The Valkyrie efforts were an on-again-off-again see-saw. NAA got the go-ahead to build the plane in 1959, then it was scaled back, accelerated, and then cancelled, with the prototypes redesignated as research aircraft. Two XB-70s were completed and flown, with a third (a YB-70, actually) cancelled while under construction.

The caption for today's 1964 image reads: "PALMDALE, CALIF., May 10 -- CONTROVERSIAL BOMBER TO MAKE BOW -- The XB70A bomber, subject of many controversies during the past several years, is pictured in its hangar at Palmdale, Calif., where it will be rolled out into the open for the first time Monday. Only two or three of the 2000-mile-an-hour planes will be built as a result of a cutdown on the program ordered by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara."

The St. Petersburg Times, when they used an image, would typically glue a copy of the actual newspaper edition to the back of the file copy, to show that it ran. This photo has none, so presumably it wasn't published, at least by that paper.

Incidently, if you look closely at the roof structure in this recent Global Hawk rollout photo, you'll recognize that the hangar which saw the birth of the XB-70 continues to see new planes develop!

Vanishing Rainbow

For the September issue of AirshowStuff Magazine, I wrote a piece on Mike Machat's new book profiling the remarkable Republic XR-12 Rainbow (you can read it here, it's on page 14), an experimental reconnaissance aircraft from the mid-1940s, a design that was far ahead of its time; only two prototypes were built, and the program was cancelled before it could go into production. Mike, who is a well-known aviation painter, writer and speaker, was wonderfully generous with his time, allowing me a long and detailed interview over drinks and appetizers before he was to make a book-signing appearance. His passion for the history of both the Republic Aircraft Corp and the Rainbow is remarkable and very personal, as his uncle was one of the engineers that helped design the plane.

And then I went home and actually read the book he wrote (World's Fastest Four-Engine Piston-Powered Aircraft: Story of the Republic XR-12 Rainbow, available at a nice discount here), and fell in love with the plane myself. I was also intrigued to find out that the Rainbow actually made at least one airshow appearance, which made it an ideal subject to be featured both in my "Vintage Wings" column in the magazine (it just ran in the November/December issue, on page 6), as well as on this blog. Mike had just the photo, one that hadn't run in the book. The image was taken in October, 1948, at the open house at Wright Field, and shows the second of the two XR-12s that were built. While the first ship was essentially a handling qualities flight test vehicle, the second one had a full interior, including all the reconnaissance cameras and even a darkroom.

This photo, and one from a different angle that was used in the book, are unique. As Mike tells it, "It is very possibly one of the last photos ever taken of the airplane, because one week later it left for operational testing at Eglin AFB, FL, and crashed on only its second test flight there on November 7th." Of the seven-man crew,  only five survived the watery crash.

Mike Machat also generously provided this Republic family
portrait of the first XR-12, shortly after it's rollout together with
a P-47N Thunderbolt and an RC-1 Thunderbolt amphibian, the
forerunner of the RC-3 Seabee, a family-friendly amphibian that
Republic had pinned its hopes on to make big with an
anticipated post-war customer base of ex-military pilots. The
economics just didn't pan out, though.

The aircraft was faster than anything in its class, and Republic had dreams of a variant also being produced as a 40-passenger airliner, the RC-2 Rainbow. Both Pan Am and American Airlines had placed orders, as it was about 100 knots faster than its Boeing and Douglas competition. Unfortunately, it was an expensive project that came about at just the wrong time. With the end of WWII, its mission evaporated, and the Pentagon decided to pass. Without the military version to fund development of the civilian airliner, the price that the airlines would have to pay soared, and both carriers cancelled their orders. It was the end of the Rainbow, and there simply was no gold there.

A Mitchell's Sting

As production of the North American B-25 Mitchell progressed throughout the early years of WWII, the arrangement of its weaponry changed dramatically with ensuing models, and the aircraft were further modified out in the field by crews wanting yet more firepower. Quite often the plane was used as a ground attack weapon rather than a medium-altitude bomber, and this strongly motivated the addition of more and more machine guns, especially those which faced forward. The MojaveWest archive recently acquired three 8x10 images that originally were taken by official North American Aircraft photographers of various machine gun installations on B-25s.

The image of the left shows a standard B-25C/D installation of two .50 caliber machine guns, one movable that was fired by the bombardier, and one fixed which was fired by the pilot.

The image on the right is a bit more unusual, as it shows an installation of two guns in a configuration that appears to have been experimental at NAA, but which didn't make it to production. While later models, including the B-25H, included twin-.50 caliber guns, they were set much farther apart and were fixed in place. These appear to be movable, and designed to both be fired by the bombardier. I have yet to come across any other images showing this configuration, so if any of you has further information on this particular installation, I'd love to hear from you in the comments section below.

The image of the left shows the two .50 caliber waist guns installed on a B-25J. While earlier models included waist guns, the -J model introduced a more functional installation, allowing a greater field of fire from the movable guns. Also note the N-8 gun sights which were also introduced with the -J model.

Alaska wrecks, Part 2: Mitchells

Today's post is the second from a collection shot by a WWII soldier who was stationed in Alaska, and who appears to have been part of a unit whose job it was (in part) to recover aircraft wrecks. The collection included two B-25 Mitchell bomber photographs, one of an in-service aircraft, and one a wreck.

Unfortunately, I don't have much information on either photo, so from a story-telling perspective, there's not a lot for this post. That will make this more of a geek's post, but sometimes history is in the details!

The photo above (and detail left) show a B-25C/D probably assigned to the 77th Bombardment Squadron, that has been equipped with an early form of radar, as evidenced by the antenna sticking forward from the bottom of the nose (an official photo from the 77th BS of a similarly radar-equipped B-25 can be seen here). Also note the additional nose guns installed - the C/D model only had 2 nose guns when it left the factory. And how about all those bombs casually stacked on the far side of the right main gear?

(Some really interesting color film footage of Alaska bomber activities can be seen here)

The second image shows a B-25 wreck laying on the tundra. It appears to have been there a while, as all the nose and cockpit glass and interior has been stripped out. The raised ground behind the wreck would indicate that this plane crashed just off of the airfield. Two PBY Catalina are parked nearby, and behind one of them, another B-25 taxis past. The forward-bent blades of the Mitchell's Number 2 engine shows that the crash occurred with the engine at power, likely on takeoff (note that the nose gear was still down at the time of the incident).

Do you have information on these specific planes, or B-25 operation in Alaska in general? I'd love to hear from you, please leave a comment below!