The SteelNavy.Com Message Board: Re: Sorry Ralph, you've got some bad info

Thank you. This is all good to know.

Light reading shows me that VF-17 was not in regular service in June of 1943. It was all still trials at that point. However, the FAA did not get their first Corsair deliveries until November of 1943. The difference then seems to be that--while the US had by then decided to assign them to land use--the FAA put them straight into carrier service (suffering a number of landing fatalities in the process) but "pushing through anyway" with them in service, and adopting the same curved approach to landing for better visibilty that they used for the Seafire. The FAA then had it in operational carrier service slightly sooner. Their first carrier combat use was in April, 1944. Most USN regular service Corsair units were just standing up in May, 1944, going aboard for regular service shortly after. It is documented that the FAA used it operationally aboard carriers before the US did. Corsairs aboard carriers for the US in 1943 were "visiting" Marine units (like Boyington's) and VF-17 doing trials. At the end of that year, the FAA took delivery of their planes, then put them straight to carrier service.

It's a matter of some hair splitting...November of 1943 vs. mid/late 1944. Still, the FAA "beat us" operationally. This is what I had in mind when I wrote what I did. I was thinking operationally. You are correct, though, that we "had them on carriers" first. The FAA did not even get theirs until November, '43, and their pilots were only training on them in June of that year.

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US carrier trials began in 1942, where a number of problems immediately became apparent which caused the Navy to initially relegate it to the Marines, who were primarily land based.

This is incorrect. Dana Bell found some documents and graciously passed them to me to post here . The Navy actually had Vought engineers out with VF-17 during shakedown and the majority of the landing issues were resolved before the end of the cruise. As you can see by reading through the posted US Navy documentation, the Navy found the Corsair to be suitable for carrier use.

The reason Corsairs were initially relegated to land bases was logistics - it made supply chains simpler and Vought did not ave the capacity at the time to produce what the Navy wanted. This is why both Goodyear and Brewster were brought in to produce Corsairs. By 1944 production was starting to close in on what the Navy wanted and the Navy started to plan to put Corsairs on carriers, but the Kamikaze attacks in October of that year caused them to rush and start with Marine squadrons.

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The Royal Navy especially developed some special landing techniques which overcame enough of the problems that they had it in carrier service in 1943.

This is also untrue. VF-17 was landing Corsairs on CV-17 Bunker Hill the same month the Royal Navy started training on the corsair (June 1943)