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The F4U Corsair owned by Jim Tobul was going to take off today from the Nation Museum of WW II Aviation today and go to El Centro, Ca. Jim fired it up and taxied to the end of the Colorado Springs airport runway, but then returned to the museum. The Corsair had new brakes put on late last year and Jim wasn’t happy with the way they reacted during the taxi. They checked them out and a couple hours later, he taxied again and the brakes were good to go, but he had missed his window for El Centro which had some bad weather so he will take off Wednesday, however I won’t be at the museum to see the takeoff. Here is a short video of him taxiing. The construction in the background is the new 40,000 SF hanger going up at the museum, scheduled to open this spring.
The P-51 video is from Oskosh 2018. If you look closely when it starts taxiing for takeoff, you’ll see Jim Tobul’s F4U Corsair (the very plane I video’d) parked to the left!
Good old radial engines like on the Corsair is what horsepower sounds like. If I remember that was the PW R2800 making 2000 hp. The Mustang was a different animal water cooled, which I always thought would only take one bullet thru a cooling line and no water and your done but I don't know. I believe the Mustang started out with about 14-1500 hp and then moved up to around 16-1700 hp. The one I flew for the museum had an engine from some twin application and made around 1850 hp with fuel injection .
As in automobiles it's all about power/weight. I think the empty weight of the Mustang was around 9000 lbs and the Corsair was around 12,000 lb.
I remember talking to some P47 pilots in my dad’s unit. They used to say if you want to look pretty, fly a mustang. If you want to come home, fly a jug. I know my dad’s plane came back a couple times with multiple cylinders blown out on his 47. I actually have a couple pieces of flak he found laying in the engine cowling.
Warren,
I don't mean to hijack your thread, and you may have already seen this one but for any of the members who have not seen "L.A. Speed Check" it is just about the funniest true plane story you will hear.
Major Brian Shul was an AR-71 Blackbird pilot. Enjoy:
All radial engines have an odd number of cylinders per row: 5, 7, 9. If they had an even number of cylinders per row, all cylinders would never fire.
MOST single row engines have 7 or 9 cylinders.
Two row engines will have 7 or 9 cylinders per row.
The only 4 row radial I'm familiar with has 7 cylinders per row (4360).
There was once an experimental 6 row radial engine, but it never went into production.
If only to bring some Corvette flavor to this thread, here's the 2,000hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800 used in so many WWII applications - thousands of these R-2800 engines were built at the Chevrolet-Tonawanda Engine Plant, starting in 1938.
For those that may never have known what was in those black poofy clouds being shot at our planes back then, here ya go. These are two flak pieces dad found in the cowl. I’ve never figured out what the lines are on the bigger piece unless they helped in separating the shell when it detonated. I have some good pictures of an in the field engine pull but they are on an old hard drive that I need to swap over.
Warren,
I don't mean to hijack your thread, and you may have already seen this one but for any of the members who have not seen "L.A. Speed Check" it is just about the funniest true plane story you will hear.
Major Brian Shul was an AR-71 Blackbird pilot. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI
This makes me laugh every time. Thank you for the Corsair video. beautiful plane. I would love to see one in person running/moving. I have been lucky enough to see many mustangs over the years and a few times B17 and 25s flying.
If only to bring some Corvette flavor to this thread, here's the 2,000hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800 used in so many WWII applications - thousands of these R-2800 engines were built at the Chevrolet-Tonawanda Engine Plant, starting in 1938.
John,
That looks exactly like the engines on our A26.
When I was a crewman in the Navy flying P2V Neptunes with the PW-3350, on takeoff we lost a cylinder. Literally, connecting rod failed and the piston and cylinder came out thru the cowling. The pilots calmly went thru the shutdown checklist as we continued to climb and the engine was still making power. They finally shut it down and we returned to land. As I remember when I checked the oil after landing we had only lost 10 gallons of the, I think, original 50 gallons.
Since that day I have had a real love for all the radials I flew behind in my aviation career.
01-15-2019, 09:57 PM
OT-Warbird F4U Taxiing
