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Attended RNAS Culdrose Air Day yesterday. The highlight? A lengthy display by a Seafire and a Corsair. Wonderfull, made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Seen Spitfires before but never had the privelage of seeing and hearing a Corsair at full chat. Can understand why the Japanese called it "Whispering Death"

Actually, the Japanese called the Corsair the "Whistling Death" because of the high-pitched sound it made in a dive, possibly caused by airflow through the wing-root oil coolers.

The Double-Wasp radial engine in the Corsair made it one of the noisiest WW II warbirds I've ever heard.

The only Seafire I ever "saw" was the one in UbiSoft's "Pacific Fighters"; it looks like a carrier-capable Spitfire w/an arresting hook.

There are a few models of Seafires (Seafire Mk17 & MK47) in CFS2 by Microsoft that I have flown.

The plane the Japanese refered to as "Whispering Death" was the Bristol Beaufighter.

Wasn't the F4U Corsair nicknamed the Whistling Death ?

The Corsair's distinctive sound, which earned it among the Japanese the nick-name of "Whistling Death", partly because of the engine noise, was caused by the wing-root inlets for engine air.

Here:

http://usfighter.tripod.com/frames1.htm

ORIGINAL: Nugget
The plane the Japanese refered to as "Whispering Death" was the Bristol Beaufighter.

I couldn't find a reference to confirm this, but after Bristol built the Beaufighter as a "day- derivative" of the Beaufort, it was found unsuitable for that role because of its slow speed. However, radar-equiped, the Beaufighter became a successful night-fighter against German "night blitz' raids over England.

Eventually some Beaufighter variants made it to the Pacific, and perhaps that's where it got its nickname from the Japanese.

It was used out of Port Moresby primarily as a ground attack fighter. It flew at tree top level along the Kokoda track to bomb any Japanese encampments or strongpoints it could find. The reason for the nick-name though is because of the quite close fitting cowling over the engines they didn't radiate a lot of noise for a piston driven aircraft, add this to their low-level tactics, they could sneak up with very little warning and attack.

I have heard this because I spent many years helping out WW2 airman, sailors and soldiers as part of a youth group I was associated with. Having already had a fascination with WW2 history anyway because of my families involvement this spurred me on to learn more.

I just realized you are posting from Sydney; for obvious reasons, many Australians take their Pacific WW II history very seriously and are adept at recalling it.

In any case, whistling or not, a Corsair couldn't sneak up on anyone, unless they were stone deaf.