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BlacktailFA — Warplane Disasters! Episode 2: The F6U Pirate
#aircraft #carrier #chance #disasters #dog #downer #explosion #failure #fighter #flying #groundhog #hangar #jet #midair #navy #pirate #queen #reject #submarine #us #vought #warplane #f6u #f6u1
Published: 2015-03-16 22:23:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 1346; Favourites: 6; Downloads: 7
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Description
The US Navy's development of their first-ever jet fighters was a long and painful process, marked with many accidents, design errors, and even deaths. From these bitter trials emerged a completely new generation of American Carrier aircraft that ran on jet propulsion, and brought naval airpower into the second half of the 20th century.The aircraft you will learn about in this presentation was NOT part of that solution. It was a dead-end bridge that cost the US taxpayer dearly in money (and nearly lives as well) without any possibility of payoff.
The F6U Pirate nearly brought-down the Chance-Vought corporation whose F4U Corsair won the air war at sea in the Second World War, because it did everything wrong.
The F6U Pirate's aerodynamics were stubby, and it had too much drag. It was made from crazy, over-elaborate materials that none of it's competitors required. The Navy and Vought were too busy sending it's assembly line on a grand tour of the US, to actually park it in any location long enough to begin mass production. Vought refused to conduct essential testing, and paid the price in frequent re-designs. The number ordered by the Navy was too small for it to use on enough Aircraft Carriers to even justify the program's very existence. The Navy never even needed it, because it had better jet fighters that were ALREADY IN SERVICE. And it's engine was a useless P.O.S. that was not only ridiculously underpowered for it's class and era, but also broke down on a regular basis, and sometimes suddenly exploded.
Yes, the engine sometimes exploded. The Pirate sucked THAT much.
And yet, there's more --- SO much more. Watch and see for yourself.
NOTE: Once again, meaninter03 has come through for me, and edited this presentation's script for spelling and grammar!
Finally, note that this is a lot longer than most of my presentations, at over 110 frames, and over 22 minutes in length. I don't like to make movies this long (any more than you like to sit through them), but there wasn't quite enough space or information to make this a 2-part presentation.
That said, here are my sources...
"The World's Worst Aircraft", by Jim Winchester (Barnes & Noble, 2005)
www.456fis.org/VOIGHT_F6U_PIRA…
www.military.cz/usa/air/post_w…
blog.usni.org/2009/03/27/fligh…
www.navalhistory.org/2010/04/0…
www.airwar.ru/enc/fighter/f6u.…
www.voughtaircraft.com/heritag…
www.voughtaircraft.com/heritag…
www.voughtaircraft.com/heritag…
www.voughtaircraft.com/heritag…
aviationtrivia.blogspot.com/20…
www.kamov.net/american-aircraf…
tanks45.tripod.com/Jets45/Hist…
www.arkansasairandmilitary.com…
www.airvectors.net/avcrus_1.ht…
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Comments: 15
Well, if it also had the same drag coefficient as a modern sub (down to 0.06 in case of the german Type 212A) ... maybe they thought:"Naval Fighter ... oh, they want something that fights under water!" ^^
As for the casing ejection: that pretty much sounds like they ALSO had huge probs with the shift of balance when losing the weight of the ammo, and came up with this contraption to compensate for it.
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Man, this aircraft had problems all around --- in fact, so did almost every other warplane Vought built. XD
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That pilot, Thayer, landed one of these planes after it exploded? This may be one of history's earliest examples of a 'Like a Boss' moment.
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Not only that, but Thayer was a test pilot for the F7U Cutlass program as well. Gotta give the man points for his backbone.
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From what I read, the real reason Grumman's design was rejected, was because Grumman had an in-house rule to use proven engines only, while the USN wanted to standardize on the Westinghouse J34. I hope some admirals were relieved of duty for this f***up.
Incidentally, Wikipedia's article on the J34 has links to something that actually used the damn things in ways that are not only successful, but cool-looking: The Shockwave and Super Shockwave jet-powered trucks, seen at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockwav… and flashfirejettrucks.com/.
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Let's just hope those J34s don't shed a few turbine blades as they pass grandstands packed with spectators!
Also, another likely reason Vought got the contract is to keep the company in business. This is basically the reason why the USAF bought the F-84 Thunderjet and it's successor, the F-84F Thunderstreak (which was actually a completely unrelated design by the time it entered production); they wanted to keep Republic in business.
Nevermind the fact that Republic was in dire straits in the first place because their aircraft kept sucking eggs (XP-41, P-44 Rocket, XP-69, and XP-72 Fighters, the XF-12 Rainbow...).
This happened again in the 1960s. Twice
First, the General Dynamics design for the TFX program (which became the F-111) was selected the winner of the design competition, despite the fact that all the contenders flunked it, and Boeing's design was overwhelmingly superior. The DoD's SSB (Source Selection Board) evaluated both designs, and decided that the Boeing Model 818 proposal offered the best deal for the money. SecDef Robert S. McNamara overruled the SSB, and demanded a recount. FOUR TIMES. Then McNamara simply overturned the entire competition and unilaterally gave the contract to General Dynamics. Although there was fare more skulduggery in the TFX Scandal than this, it was also clear that Boeing was raking-in the dollars with the 707 airliner, while the Convair (part of General Dynamics) 880 and 990 airliners --- GD lost $450 Million (1/4 of their value) to the 880/990, all because Howard Hughes kept changing the design requirements on a dime, and then suddenly abandoned the program on a whim. In other words, GD let a literal madman take the steering wheel.
Second, when the B-1A program selected the North American Rockwell (later, just "Rockwell") design, it was immediately noted that out of the three competitors, Boeing had a healthy airliner market, General Dynamics was building the F-111, and and North American Rockwell wasn't building anything significant --- and they were in trouble as a result. Again, Boeing offered what was deemed by the selection committee themselves to be the best candidate, but the North American Rockwell design was selected anyway.
The official rationale for these actions (raised only when top officials are called on them) was that the DoD needed to maintain a healthy "manufacturing base", but this is still no excuse for selecting the worst design; the companies in trouble could have built the better designs under license.
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Hell, the Pentagon did the same damn thing when they ordered Curtiss to build P-47s under license. I wonder why the Pentagon couldn't order Boeing to give their TFX design to General Dynamics, and then order General Dynamics to build the Boeing design. This might hurt the designers' pride, but as long as money keeps coming in, it shouldn't hurt the company that much.
As for the B-1, Rockwell DID have a superior design- in the B-70 Valkyrie- which McNamara killed because he believed the same "SURFACE-LAUNCHED missiles will replace all manned combat aircraft" bullsh** that Sandys did, and which ended up crippling the British aviation industry.
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Ah, thee Pirate. Awefully short prodution run, awefully short service life, all signs of a brilliant design, right?
For some reason the failure of the Cutlass does sadden me. That bird look gorgeous. Alas, it probably had more problemas than just the engine. The Skyray was another beautiful aircraft, but ended up serving well, albeit for a short time.
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The Skyray was at least a good performer, proving that not all short-lived aircraft are bad ones; another instance is the Grumman F-11 Tiger.
As for the Cutlass, that will have to wait until another time. XD
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Yes, I agree. The F-11 was another gorgeous aircraft supplanted by the advancement of the world around it. I still like it very much.
Ah, I'll wait, then. I'm sure it will be good.
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Yes, I agree. The F-11 was another gorgeous aircraft supplanted by the advancement of the world around it. I still like it very much.
Ah, I'll wait, then. I'm sure it will be good.
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This is pretty depressing that Vought, the designers of the legendary F4U Corsair could screw up so badly. Most informative though, I'm pretty sure that a couple of points to learn also came under the lessons of the last one. (Perhaps they should have paid attention to them!)
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As it happens, just about everything Vought built wasn't all that good.
The F4U Corsair's development began in 1938, but they didn't enter service until 1943. Even then, the Corsair flunked it's Carrier trials twice in a row (both in 1943 and 1944; it didn't pass until early 1945, and only with the help of the British, but the war was mostly over by then anyway). It was only used by the US Marine Corps (and primarily for CAS) until 1945, because it could launch from a Carrier, but not land on one. You know what other aircraft can launch from a Carrier, but not land on it, and perform CAS superbly? The P-47 Thunderbolt that was already in widespread service.
Next was the F6U Pirate. 'Nuff said.
Then there was the Gutless Cutlass, which you can be sure will have it's own Warplane Disaster profile in the future. It was this reputation that resulted in the following F-8 Crusader being known as "Vought's Last Chance" (a play on the manufacturer's name, Chance Vought).
The F-8 Crusader wasn't all that great either. Like the F4U Corsair, it was formidable in combat, but it had serious issues that were almost crippling.
The A-7 Corsair II had a brush with disaster when the US Navt decided it would be a great idea to re-engine this shortened Crusader with a TF30 Turbofan (an engine so bad, it nearly ruined every aircraft it was ever used in). It's no accident that the only successful and long-lived variants --- the A-7D and A-7E --- were re-engined with the Allison TF41 (a.k.a., the Rolls Royce Spey!).
Vought's last attempt at a new warplane was the ill-fated A-7F Strikefighter. In stretching it back out to the length of an F-8 Crusader and re-engining it for the F100 Turbofan, the end result was a sub-par F-16 imitator, and everyone called Vought on it. It was such a huge embarrassment, it put the whole company out of the aviation business.
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I'm somewhat amazed that it actually flew in the first place. It looks like a brick.
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If you think *this* airplane is bad, wait until we get to the F7U Cutlass.
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