If other aircraft had been parked on the forward part of the Sangamon’s flight deck, there would have been a pile-up.īut the compromised visibility and wild bounce didn’t frighten Porter as much as the airplane’s behavior during the moments in between. When the Corsair thumped down on the deck, the landing gear’s oleos-shock-absorbing struts-bottomed out, then bounced back like giant pogo sticks, causing the airplane to bound over the arresting wires. The fighter’s ultra-long “hose nose” made it nearly impossible for the pilot to get timely feedback to make corrections to his approach. The Corsair’s cockpit was so far back in its fuselage that Porter found it difficult to see the Sangamon’s landing signal officer on the port side of its deck. After four terrifying landings, he called it quits, certain the airplane was on the verge of killing him. In fall 1942, Lieutenant Commander Sam Porter tested the feasibility of operating the Navy’s bent-wing fighter from the deck of the escort carrier USS Sangamon steaming in the Chesapeake Bay.

The initial carrier-landing qualifications for the Chance Vought F4U Corsair were a disaster.

World war 2 navy squadrons