Corsair Tranfere?

[john martino]

Can Corsairs be transfered to CVs once they enter the game in late 42 or early 43. I guess if this is possible you would send off the Wildcats in the VF group. Is this possible????

[Clipper1968]

Yes I think you should be able to do that but you must transfer one of CV's native squadron to another location to avoid overloading.

[Denniss]

It is possible to have Corsairs on CV early in the game but this is a game BUG and should not be done as they were historically not usable on carriers unless the brits figured out how it's possible .
Search the Forum for details

[marky]

yeh, they couldnt use corsairs on carriers till the end of the war

so they gave em to the brits, and the brits fixed em and they started using em on carriers


i think it was cuz of the corsairs faster landing speed, and that they didnt have good visibility forward of the cockpit

i cant remember exactly tho

[rogueusmc]

The Corsair units not originating on a carrier are 'carrier capable' not 'carrier qualified'. 'carrier capable' can be placed on a carrier but it will take higher ops losses than a 'carrier qualified' unit. It isn't a bug.

[crsutton]

Yes, you can use corsairs on carriers. I frequently use them on escort carriers for CAP. This has been argued back and forth many times here with many different opinions. It is a minor bug but I do not object to my opponents doing it. Many complain that it is not historical and that is true but it is also true that many zero and val squadrons-especially after 1942 were not carrier trained. However, nobody really objects to the Japanese player using them all on carriers-so there you have it. I consider it a pretty fair deal. Besides, we are generally not playing historical scenarios anyway.[;)]

[Denniss]

With Corsairs it was no crew training program - they had to work out how to direct a pilot to land onto a carrier without slamming into the water or onto the deck .
AFAIK some small modifications had to be made to the planes and new methods of directing the pilot into the correct way and height approaching the carrier had to be established .
This all took a long time and as the brits needed a good carrier fighter badly they had to figure this stuff out and it worked for them but they lost some planes/pilots in trials

It is a known game BUG carrier groups sitting on land bases upgrade to Corsairs long time before they should do - if UV gets a last patch this will be fixed (I hope so)

[sdj420]

Historical notes:

"The first Navy squadron to receive the F4U-1 was VF-12 at North Island, California, followed shortly by VF-17 at NAS Norfolk, Virginia. The first Marine Corps squadron to receive the Corsair was VMF-124. Despite the F4U-1s high speed and maneuverability, the Navy was disappointed with the Corsair after carrier trials pointed out some undesirable landing characteristics. The port wing drop at landing speed was dangerous enough on land bases, but it was unforgivable for carrier operations. This problem, coupled with the tendancy to bounce during arrested landing and the obstruction of visibility in a three-point attitude , caused by the long nose of the Corsair, lef the Navy to declare the big figher unsuitable for carrier operations. Vought set out the remedy these problems and dis so eventually, but in the meantime, the F4U-1 was relegated to operations from land bases. As it turned out, the Navy's loss was the Marine Corps' gain, since most of the early Corsairs wer assigned to the Corps."
...
"The British Royal Navy had the honor of beig the first to operationally fly the Corsair from the descks of their carriers. Due to the overhead space limiation of the hanger decks on their carriers te British Corsairs had eight inches clipped from their wingtips." (pgs 7-8)

- Sullivan, Jim; F4U Corsair In Action; Squadron Signal Publications; Carrollton, TX; 1994.

[CMDRMCTOAST]

Some guy's use them wich some would say is a gamey tactic
but most of us won't use them for historic reasons.
Although I try to keep carrier battles under there umbrella....

[Micah Goodman]

According to Tom Blackburn, Commander VF-17, he felt that the reason the Corsair was not deployed initially on carriers had nothing to do with operational problems but logistics instead. The Navy already had two distinct fighters operating from carriers (The Wildcat and the Hellcat) and that adding a third type, (the Corsair) would create a logistical nightmare for the Navy. Originally, his squadron deployed on the USS Bunker Hill but was replaced by a Hellcat squadron when it reached Pearl Harbor. Several months after arriving in the Solomon Islands they provided CAP for a TF that attacked Japanese ships in the Empress Augusta Bay area. They landed to refuel on the USS Bunker Hill then returned to CAP duties. I think that the myth surrounding the Corsairs carrier problems arouse from the initial difficulties it did have in carrier operations that were fixed jointly by the Navy and Vought, and sense they did not deploy on carriers regularly for about another year the myth stuck. For anyone interested you can read Jolly Roger VF-17 by Tom Blackburn.

[CynicAl]

Indeed. Blackburn makes it quite clear that VF-17, once equipped with the new F4U-1A*, was fully operational by the time Bunker Hill reached the Pacific. The only real problem with the F4U was that Vought couldn't build Corsairs even half as fast as Grumman could crank out Hellcats**.

An interesting side note - it seems that the first Corsair squadron to fly operational sorties from a CV may have done so in US markings, as part of a nightfighter squadron. The first combat missions flown by Corsair squadrons from British CVs did not occur until the April 1944 attacks on Tirpitz, by which time VF(N)-101 had already been operational from shipboard for three months flying F4U-2s. The F4U-2 was basically an F4U-1A with a heavy, draggy radar pod slung beneath the wing - you can imagine the sort of effect THAT had on handling! But somehow they flew these things from carriers. At night. As I said, there was only one real problem with the F4U.

* Only about 750 of the original F4U-1 model were built - the vast bulk of Corsair production consisted of fully carrier-capable -1A fighters and -1D fighter bombers.

** The total numbers built of the two types are similar at a bit over 12k, but the Corsair's tally includes ~4k built by Goodyear as well as ~2k more built postwar - all 12k+ Hellcats were built by Grumman during the war, and in fact Grumman was tailing off F6F production in favor of the F8F in 1945.