F4U CORSAIR [WARBIRD HISTORY]

Motorbooks International

WARBIRD HISTORY

F4U Corsair is a superb new history of the design, development, combat record, and air-racing career of the F4U Corsair and all its variants. Through first-person interviews with dozens of Corsair test pilots, combat pilots, ground-crew members, and air-race pilots, the authors take you along on hair-raising combat missions over Japan and Korea and onto the race courses at Cleveland and Reno. These veterans opened their personal photo archives for this book, contributing dozens of never-before-published color and black-and-white photos of their Corsairs, their fellow crews, and themselves. 

This combination of first-person anecdotes and history on the Corsair is unequaled in any other book.

F4UCORSAIR

The Japanese called it "Whistling Death." Its pilots called it "Hose Nose" or "Bent-Wing Bird." But whatever it was the ultimate Navy and Marine Fighter called, the Vought F4U Corsair was of World War II.

Flown to glory by such pilots as "Pappy" Boyington, "Tommy" Blackburn, and "Ike" Kepford, and by such colorful units as the "Black Sheep" and "Jolly Rogers," Corsairs decimated Japanese fighters and bombers wherever they were sent.

The Corsair was called on to enter a new fray when the Korean War broke out in 1950, and again it proved worthy as a fighter and ground-attack plane, even in the jet age. Later in the 1950s, the Corsair was flown in combat by the French in Algeria and Egypt. In 1969, the Corsair saw battle yet again, in the "Soccer War" between Honduras and El Salvador, in which a Honduran Corsair piloted by Capt. Fernando Soto shot down a P-51 Mustang and two FG-1D Corsairs. The last Corsairs were retired from service in the early 1970s, making the Corsair the longest-serving combat plane in history.

F4U Corsair is a superb new history of this great American fighter. Its detailed text describes every detail of the Corsair, its design and development stages, the troubles in getting the Corsair qualified for carrier operations, and the many versions of the fighter, from the first design studies to the F2G Super Corsairs and the postwar AU-1 and F4U-7.

F4U Corsair also presents a lively combat and operational history of the Corsair-including those flown by Britain's Royal Navy and by the Royal New Zealand Air Force-in World War II, the Korean War, and in postwar US and foreign service. The authors weave into the narrative the combat experiences of dozens of Corsair pilots and ground crew members to vividly evoke the feel of the times... 

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