Vought Corsair Ramjet

[TomZ]

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.

http://airwar1946.nl/whif/L46-F4UR.htm

TomZ
http://www.airwar1946.nl/index.htm

[PR19_Kit]

I bet the pilots were pensioned off early as they'd all gone deaf! 

Cracking model there Tom. 

[Dizzyfugu]

"WHAT...?" 

[zenrat]

 

[NARSES2]

Intriguing. Make a great rapid response point interceptor 

[Tophe]

Wonderful!

[TheChronicOne]

Wild!! I love it... great work!

[Joe C-P]

Whooaaa.   

[ysi_maniac]

Absolutely COOL!!!

[darthspud2]

whole new spin on Lend Lease i guess
VERY NICE IDEA