Marines soon made use of the Corsair's speed, agility, ruggedness and range as they flew it from rough runways on small Pacific islands. However, the British Fleet Air Arm persisted (probably through necessity as much as any other factor) and by using different landing techniques and modifications, went on to operate the aircraft successfully from carriers. Navy proceeded with the easier to handle Grumman Hellcat, turning over the Corsair to the U.S. The clean lines of the airframe and the powerful engine gave the Corsair a 400mph plus top speed and impressive rates of climb, but the long nose and consequent poor forward visibility when landing, coupled with other difficulties initially made for unsuccessful carrier trials. As well as being structurally sound the distinctive configuration had the advantage of minimising drag at the wing root to fuselage joint. The inboard section of the wing having a severe anhedral angle and outboard section a severe dihedral angle with the undercarriage positioned at the joint of the two.

To overcome this problem, the design team lead by Rex Beisel came up with a 'bent' inverted gull wing design. The simple answer of a tall undercarriage would be unacceptable due to the harsh landing loads expected for a carrier based aircraft. The engine required a very large diameter propeller to use the 1850 horsepower available, which gave the Vought engineers a headache as it required an equally large clearance to the ground. Chance Vought successfully answered this request with a proposal for an aircraft fitted with the biggest, most powerful, air-cooled engine of the day - the hugely powerful Pratt and Whitney 18-cylinder Double Wasp. Bureau of Aeronautics issued a specification to manufacturers for a carrier-based fighter bomber.

Plan corsair f4u balsa