Vought F4U Corsair Ramjet
In 1943 the US Navy
was looking for ways to boost the performance of their fighter
aircraft. Although the new jet engines showed a lot of promise, they
were still suffering from a lot of teething problems.
Also the high fuel
consumption of the jet engines of the day made them unsuitable for
carrier use.
At the same time in
Britain the V-1 attacks were mounting and from a number of crashed V-1s
the British reconstituted a number of pulse jet engines sending some of
them to the USA for testing.
As a result of these
tests the US government ordered a production run of 240 copies of the
Argus engines from Pratt & Whitney. They received the designation
J014-01
The Vought company
received a number of the pre-production engines and designed a pulse
jet powered version of the F4U Corsair. To save time a minimal redesign
was done to the original design.
This fighter had
four J014 pulse jet engines mounted on the wings. Because there was no
longer an engine in the nose, a solid nose was installed with 8 machine
guns. These together with the six wing mounted guns provided an
enormous fire power.
Because the pulse
engines required an airflow to develop thrust the aircraft were
launched using a jet rocket pack which was jettisoned after take-off.
The first 12 Pulse
Corsairs were designated F4U-9 and were delivered to the Navy in the
beginning of 1945 and were tested on the carrier USS Hornet. They flew
a number of patrols over Okinawa but never had any actual combat.
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Last updated: 13/08/2017