My next one an RCN bird

[Damian2]

Hi again!

I was looking at my spares box and my Academy F4U-4B Corsair and started tacking on various bits of plastic till I cam to this. My current designation for it is the F4U-8. She'll be painted in the same scheme as the RCN Sea Furies...

Now all I need is a back story explaining the enlarged engine!

Side shot of mock-up



A 3/4 view;



Last shot:



So what do you guys think?

[Shasper]

Derivetive of the Goodyear F2G super corsair?

Shas  B)  

[Damian2]

Derivetive of the Goodyear F2G super corsair?

Shas  B)

I'm chatting with Ollie and he's just pointed that out to me too!

Yes something like that...ok to be honest I just liked the look of it and made the connection later!

[Hatchet]

Looks cool mate!

[Spey_Phantom]

i got a good explenation for the engine.

"with recent actions in Korea, the Mig-15 outruned most other planes like the seafury, so the Canadian Navy bought a number of ex-US navy corsairs and fitted them with a more powerfull 2300hp engine to be utilised against the Mig-15 and for high altitude dogfights.

just a thought    

[Damian2]

i got a good explenation for the engine.

"with recent actions in Korea, the Mig-15 outruned most other planes like the seafury, so the Canadian Navy bought a number of ex-US navy corsairs and fitted them with a more powerfull 2300hp engine to be utilised against the Mig-15 and for high altitude dogfights.

just a thought  

I like that idea!

[Radish]

Make the engine a bit more powerful....it has got 4 rows after all!
Will you fit a periscope for the pilot to see over the nose?
How about finlets on the tailplanes to assist with stability?

Beautiful      

[Damian2]

Make the engine a bit more powerful....it has got 4 rows after all!
Will you fit a periscope for the pilot to see over the nose?
How about finlets on the tailplanes to assist with stability?

Beautiful    

Well if its the R-4360 it should have more that 3000hp and the pilot can learn to live with the nose

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Well if its the R-4360 it should have more that 3000hp and the pilot can learn to live with the nose

With that kind of power available it should be able to land almost vertical and then stop on a dime and give you back six cents change....

Have you considered using a five or six blade propeller to make it really interesting?  Say something from the Sea Fury or better yet, a Wyvern...  

[Damian2]

Well if its the R-4360 it should have more that 3000hp and the pilot can learn to live with the nose

With that kind of power available it should be able to land almost vertical and then stop on a dime and give you back six cents change....

Have you considered using a five or six blade propeller to make it really interesting?  Say something from the Sea Fury or better yet, a Wyvern...

I'd love to use a prop from my Sea Fury but I need that for my USN Sea Fury project to come.

I plan on doing 3 Sea Furies, overall dark sea blue, gull grey over white and SEA.

As for the Wyvern I don't have one in 1/48 to part out  

[GTX]

To take a slightly different tack - why don't you forget about the air-to-ar role and turn it into a mud-mover?  Apart from being more likely in the Korean/post-Korean war time-frame, you could avoid the problems of trying to fight it out with MiGs - very difficult for a prop job at that stage.

Say that it was a home-grown Canadian equivalent to the Douglas A-1 Skyraider.  The extra power needed to carry a full load out similar to the Skyraider (see pics below).  This also allows you to fit extra pylons and heaps of weapons - always a fun thing .

You could even take it to the extent of having it as an early Canadian contribution to the Vietnam war.




regards,

Greg

[The Rat]

A name huh? Well, how about 'Arviq'? It's the Inuit (Eskimo) name for the Bowhead Whale, which has a head which takes up about a third of its body length!

[Captain Canada]

Engine commonality with the Canadair Argus would be a good explanation.

[The Rat]

Engine commonality with the Canadair Argus would be a good explanation.

The Argus wouldn't have been known during the Korean war though, it didn't fly until '57.

[Gary]

In the early 1950's Canada began the initial development phase of what was to be considered the finest anti-submarine plane of it's time, the CP107 Argus. But all adventures in aviation development don't go as planed sometimes. Argus was to incorporate a radical new engine, the Wright R-3350 TC981 EA-1 Turbo Compound, 3,700 hp, radial. Initial projections put the fleet at 64 aircraft requiring 4 engines each and a 30% spare consideration for the first 4 years of operation. This worked out to roughly 340 of the massive powerplants.
Wright, upon learning of the impending order and expecting considerably larger orders insisted that Canada seal the deal early if they expected to have enough engines in supply by the time production lines were to start in 1957. They offered a considerable cost advantage if they would sign on the dotted line, and so Ottawa did, 4 years before the first Argus was built. Within 4 months of signing almost 1/2 the engines were delivered. Unknown to Ottawa, PanAmerican cancelled an order for options on turbo props for a new airliner that never materialized. Within 9 months, warehouses from BC to Ontario were loaded with the engines and cases  upon cases of parts. Then the axe fell on the Argus project. The order for the Argus was cut to almost in half, to 33. Projected foreign sales were blocked due to technologie sharing issues regarding the ASW gear.
Now with more than half the powerplants being considered redundant, the question was what to do. Meanwhile the Korean War was raging and the USA had pulled their mighty Corsairs out of mothballs and were using them to great advantage. Canadair, the builder of the Argus sprang on an opportunity. Use the huge powerplants that had laying about in the tough Corsairs. With greater power, the warload could increase. And the interception problems the US Corsairs were facing from the Migs ranging accross the Yalu could now be handled.
Canadair purchased 50 stored Corsairs from surplus US inventory. The initial problem was where to use all the extra power. The solution was an 8 bladed square ended long chord counter rotating propeller. This style of prop would eventually see itself used in later turboprops. This helped eleviate the torque problems the fighter would encounter. The wings were lenghtened and now incorporated four additional hard points capable of carrying 1000 lb bombs, for a total of 10 1000 bombs or 8 with two drop tanks. In addition, 8 4 inch HARV rocked could be added. The guns went up to four 20mm and 2 36mm cannons in the wings, three in each wing. The longer wing gave the extra lift, the engine gave the extra thrust. A ventral fin and a fillet on the vertical stabilizer improved inflight stability. Armour plating was added around the cockpit and the vitals of the engine. To accomidate carrier use, the wings went to a twist fold, common to Grumman aircraft, just outboard the kink in the wing.
The aircraft was raw aggression, anger personified in aluminum and cold rolled steel. The inboard 36 mm cannons were rated to punch through armour and their long barrels had a predetory look to the already dangerous looking bird. Fully loaded, she still performed better than the fully loaded stable mate she was spawned from.
Five aircraft were combat tested in Korea in the last days of the conflict and among the notes, the cannons ripped everything they shot at to shreads, including Mig 15's and assorted ground attack aircraft. The bombload could be rippled and spread destruction out for over a mile. In a dogfight situation the verticle plane became the playground of the new fighter, caipable of verticle flight at over 460 mph to an altitude of 38,000 ft. Migs simply couldn't match up and would stall in the verticle pursuit. When this happened, the Canadair varient of the fighter would flip back over, and watch as the hapless Mig pilot tried to relight his engine, meanwhile taking a merceless pounding from the 6 cannons. The Migs rarely survived the encounters.
The pilots named their mounts Wolverene, after the powerful grey beasts of the northern forest. The North Koreans called it Satan's Freight Train, after the terrible engines howel and the massive bombload they delivered. Troops on the ground who saw the beast rain destruction on the enemy called her the Great Grey Saviour. Mig pilots were heard to have called them The Stairway to Heaven, a phrase later to be coined in to a rock song.
However the war ended. The program got lost in the push for peace and Canadair discontinued the program. Twelve were built and tested, 31 other airframes were in mid conversion. The others were sold to private individuals for racing or commercial uses like crop dusting. Only one complete airframe exists, one of the Korean five. She sits in a private collection, lovingly preserved by a former engineer of Canadair, Bob Kurten.