Whistling Death

“Whistling Death.” (Photo by Ron Palermo.)

“Ron, that’s a fabulous photograph,” I said.
“I just blogged a Corsair among my April calendars, and your picture is better than the calendar-picture.”
Ron, like me, is a retired Regional Transit bus-driver. For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
Ron also belongs to the nearby National Warplane Museum at Geneseo’s Airport. They have a collection of classic propellor airplanes, including a few WWII warbirds. They also have a jet-powered T-33 trainer, based on the F-80 “Shooting Star.”
Every summer they put on an airshow of classic airplanes, many of which are WWII warbirds. They display a hosted B-17, plus their own C-47 transport, the military version of the Douglas DC-3.
The show attracts many classic airplanes, many of which are WWII warbirds. Many are P-51 Mustangs. All bow to the Mustang fighter-plane. All Americans, by law, should be required to see, and hear, a P-51 Mustang fly.
In 2014 the show attracted the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair pictured above. I also took my own photograph, but Ron’s is way better.
The Corsair was stored inside the group’s hanger. There it was, wings folded just like on a carrier-deck, “Hose-Nose,” “Whistling Death.”
Ron got it right! Prominent is that huge 14-foot propeller, and its Pratt and Whitney R-2800-8 engine. Corsairs lack the beauty and grace of a P-51, but face-on they mean business.
The Grumman F6F Hellcat uses the same engine, but it’s not as fast. The Corsair is a hotrod, minimal airplane with a monster motor. A Corsair was capable of over 400 mph; first for a single-engine fighter.
Corsairs were a terror in the skies. Japanese pilots called ‘em “Whistling-Death” because they emitted a whistle in hot pursuit. Those Japanese pilots considered the Corsair their greatest threat.
Corsairs are rife with compromise, so are easy to identify. It’s that inverted gull-wing, necessitated by that giant propellor. In order to clear that propellor the landing-gear would have had to be stilts. Instead the wing was drooped.
“Not often does a Corsair make that airshow,” Ron said.
In 2014 one did. I shot it too, but Ron got the extraordinary.

Corsair

Whistling death. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

“Won’t it catch fire?” I worriedly asked our military guide at Willow Grove Naval Air Station northwest of Philadelphia.
A fighter-jock had just climbed into the cockpit of his Chance Vought F4U Corsair fighter-plane, and was firing it up.
A giant gout of yellow flame cascaded along the plane’s fuselage, as it’s Pratt and Whitney R-2800-8 roared to life. 2,000 horsepower, 2,800 cubic-inches, 18 cylinders in a two-row air-cooled radial. Incredible racket!
It was 1951. I was seven. My cub-scout troop had gone to Willow Grove for a field-trip.
The pilot was gonna practice tailhook landings on Willow Grove’s runway. An arresting cable had been strung across the runway, just like an aircraft carrier, except it wasn’t a ship. You didn’t shoot toward the ocean if the cable didn’t catch.
Soon the Corsair was roaring over our heads. Funny how things like this are what’s remembered from my childhood.

We visit Willow Grove Naval Air Station. (We are in front of a Twin-Beech.)

The Corsair fighter-plane can possibly be traced to problems the Navy had operating the Grumman F4F Wildcat off aircraft-carriers. A plane had to be slammed onto the carrier-deck when landing. It could bounce.
The landing-gear on a Wildcat was narrow; it retracted into the plane’s belly. With narrow landing-gear a Wildcat could easily tip over. Drag a wing into the deck, and crash! Often into the sea.
To land on carrier-decks, the landing-gear had to be wide — retracting into the wings.
Grumman was dealing with this too. The F6F Hellcat followed the Wildcat. Landing-gear had been relocated into the wings, with wings rooted at the plane’s belly. On the Wildcat wings were centered.
A Hellcat wasn’t as fast as the Corsair, but it was easier to land and maneuver on a carrier-deck.
Like the Hellcat the Corsair was also response to a naval air specification. It also took advantage of huge leaps in air-cooled radial engine output. The Hellcat also uses the Pratt and Whitney R-2800-8 , as does Republic’s P-47 Thunderbolt.
The Corsair lacks the grace of the later P-51 Mustang. But the Corsair’s motor is air-cooled. The P-51 is water-cooled, as are a number of earlier Army Air Corps fighter-planes.
The Navy avoided water-cooling. All one had to do was disable the water-cooling — shoot it up — and that fabulous water-cooled motor was silenced. It took a lot to cripple an air-cooled fighter-plane.
The Corsair is rife with compromise. That’s mainly due to its giant 14-foot propeller. In order to clear that prop, it needed longer landing-gear — or the wings had to be drooped.
That’s the Corsair’s famous inverted gull-wing. Lengthening the landing-gear begged collapse. It also compromised wing-chord. Instead the wing got drooped to avoid these problems — mainly turning the landing-gear into stilts.
The Corsair was more-or-less a hotrod. Plain and unattractive, but a terror in air-to-air combat. Japanese fighter-pilots called it “Whistling-death.” A Corsair in hot pursuit emitted a whistling sound.
The Corsair pictured appears to be the three-bladed prop. Four-bladed Corsairs are even more powerful. I’ve never seen a recent four-bladed Corsair. No idea what the Willow Grove Corsair was.

P-38

“Forked-tailed devil.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The December 2017 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is one of my favorite propeller airplanes, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
As desirable as the P-51 Mustang. All it lacks is the Packard-Merlin engine.
As far as I know, the P-38 was a first product of Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson. who later became head of Lockheed’s famous “Skunk Works.”

F-104 StarFighter. (“Widow-Maker.”)

“Skunk Works” lasted a long lime with Johnson at the helm. Many airplanes were Skunk Works; perhaps best was the F-104 StarFighter.
In 1939 an experimental pre-production P-38 set a cross-country speed record. Californy-to-New York in 7 hours, 2 minutes, not counting two refueling stops. But the airplane suffered carburetor icing and crashed.
Despite that the Army Air Corps was still interested. The P-38 required monkeyshines to convince the Air Corps. Being twin-engined, it didn’t meet the requirement for single-engine fighter-planes.
A new category was begun to allow the P-38, so-called “intercepters.” And with two engines a P-38 also needed more wing.
No matter, it still was gorgeous; also a worthy fighter. It was maneuverable and fast — the first fighter to exceed 400 mph.
Moreover its guns were in the nose, not the wings. You didn’t hafta worry about getting your target into the “convergence-zone:” the area ahead of the plane where wing-shot bullets converged.
With a P-38 it was just aim-and-shoot.
The P-38 also had counter-rotating engines. The engine and propeller on the left rotated the reverse of the one on the right. This counteracts rotation effect, which had to be balanced (“trimmed”). If both props rotated the same way, the airplane drifted from straight ahead.
Pilots loved the P-38. They could get away with grievous mistakes.
Years ago I went to a historic plane airshow because I heard a P-38 would attend. It landed and parked. Motors off the props stopped rotating. “Oh yeah,” I said; “counter-rotating props. I forgot.”

First P-38 I ever saw. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

The airshow P-38 wasn’t much to look at. Restoration had just begun. But it was a P-38, and airworthy. I guess P-38s are rare; my WWII warbirds site says only about five remain.
As a child I had a plastic model of a P-38. I think it was yellow, completely unpainted. I never painted anything — too sloppy.
Apparently that twin-boom tail could be troublesome. Power-dive a P-38 and those twin booms would vibrate toward 500 mph. Controls would lock up. Some P-38s crashed because of that.
P-38s were also turbo-supercharged to operate at high altitude. It’s too bad they weren’t the Mustang’s hot-rod Packard-Merlin V12. But I’d be willing to bet some P-38s were converted.

The greatest airplane of all time. (Photo by Brian Johnstone.)

What I say now is “the next airshow I attend will have a ‘Connie’ in it.” I think Lockheed’s Constellation is the greatest airplane of all time. It uses the P-38 wing, enlarged of course.
It too was developed by Kelly, etc. Why is it so many Skunk Works airplanes looked great?

• The F-104 StarFighter was called a “widow-maker” because it needed much higher approach and landing speeds. An unknowing pilot might crash.

PBY

The Cat beckons. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—I guess I’m gonna be able to blog that “Cat” after all.
The April 2017 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Consolidated PBY, a Catalina.
The “Cat” is a weird-looking duck; it’s amphibious.
(Although I guess the first PBYs weren’t amphibious, just a flying boat.)
Its gigantic wing is above the fuselage on a pylon, so it doesn’t dip into the water. That wing is 104 feet long.
There are retractible pontoons at the wing-ends. They also help keep the wing outta the water.
I decided to stop blogging all seven calendars. It consumed too much time.
But the incredible calendar-photo of that PBY has been grabbing my attention all month.
In my youth I had a PBY model. It was baby-blue plastic.
It was probably Revell, and given me as a Christmas-present.
Revell models were very well made. The airplane models had interlocking wing-tabs. The wings didn’t sag.
My PBY didn’t have interlocking tabs, but it was so well-made I sprung for other Revell bomber models. First a B-36, then a B-47, finally a B-52.
All had interlocking wing-tabs.
I also had an Aurora B-26 model, but its wings sagged. They didn’t interlock. The wings were held on by model cement. The wing-tabs, maybe a quarter-inch deep, fit slots in the fuselage. The wings quickly drooped.
That B-26 was also a Christmas-present.
The Catalina was used a long time, observation and patrol, and also search-and-rescue.
Many Navy fighter-pilots owed their lives to the “Cat.”
The Cats were first used after 1936, a response to a Navy request in 1933. Yet the final PBYs (in foreign countries) lasted into the ‘70s. The final PBYs in civilian service were retired in the early 1980s, serving as passenger transports and in fire-fighting.
They used two 1,200 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp radial engines, a propeller airplane. Above the fuselage, those engines could be right next to each other.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some were later converted to turboprop, although I’ve never seen one. (I’ve seen turboprop DC-3s.)
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“A total of approximately 4,000 Catalinas and variants were built between 1936 and 1945. Because of their worldwide popularity, there was scarcely a maritime battle in WWII in which they were not involved.
The PBY had vulnerabilities. It was slow, with a maximum speed of 179 mph, and with no crew armor or self-sealing tanks, it was highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft attack.
However it was these weaknesses, coincident with the development of effective radar, and Japanese reliance on night transport, which led to the development of the “Black Cat Squadrons.”
These crews performed nighttime search-and-attack missions in their black-painted PBYs. The tactics were spectacularly successful and seriously disrupted the flow of supplies and personnel to Japanese island bases.
The Catalinas also proved effective in search and rescue missions, code-named “Dumbo.” Small detachments, normally of three PBYs, routinely orbited on stand-by near targeted combat areas. One detachment based in the Solomon islands rescued 161 airmen between January 1 and August 15, 1943.”
My PBY became one of my favorite models.
It wasn’t painted. I never painted anything; I was afraid of ruining things. Better to accept an unpainted model than slop. My models often had decals. They were enough.
I remember once casting a tiny concrete weight to insert in the nose of my American Airlines DC-7 model to get it to fully stand on its tricycle landing-gear, not tipped nose-up on its tail-runner.
So now I wonder if the PBY pictured is watertight. It’s nose-wheel is in the hull; that cover could easily leak.
I also wondered if the PBY I saw was watertight. Being amphibious they could avoid water.