My adventures witht he bent wing bird

Air Classics, Jul 2001 by Cantrell, Richard A

My next adventure came in Advanced Carrier Qualification Training which was conducted out of Corry Field, Pensacola, Florida. Our field carrier landing practice (FCLP) was conducted at one of the outlying fields the paved area of which was perfectly circular. So the alignment of the "flight deck" could always be into the wind. Because of the tremendous torque from the 2000-horsepower R-2800 engine and the four-- bladed prop, a considerable amount of right rudder was necessary on takeoff. FCLP was conducted much the same way as ordinary touch-and-go landing practice, except that the landing gear and flaps were left down all the time and, during the approach, the pilot was under the direction of the Landing Signal Officer (LSO). As soon as we got the cut we would add power, raise the tail, takeoff, and go around to land again.

Well, on one occasion, when I added power and raised the tail, with plenty of right rudder, to my amazement the plane asserted itself and abruptly turned at least 45 degrees to the left. I had no choice but to takeoff in that new direction. As I look back over my training jacket, I see no mention of that incident. I guess the LSO never knew it happened, because his back was to me as he brought in the next plane. But I remember at the time figuring out what had happened. It was a case of gyroscopic precession.

When the axis of a gyroscope is rotated the gyro attempts to make the plane of the rotation of the axis become the new plane of rotation for the gyro. I had evidently raised my tail too abruptly as I added power and the massive propeller acted as a gyroscope. It tried to rotate in the plane of the F4U's rotation causing the F4U to abruptly turn to the left. I never heard of that happening again. But perhaps it has. At any rate, if I had not been on a circular field, I would have been a goner!

Another little adventure happened during FCLP. On one hop I had great difficulty in getting the F4U slow enough. Which meant that I wasn't getting sufficiently "cocked up." When you are flying carrier approaches in a piston-engined plane you do not look at your instruments, you keep your eyes on the LSO and observe the plane's attitude with your peripheral vision. You control your speed with your attitude; you control altitude with your throttle. After the flight was over, I discovered that the normally included cushion was missing from the seat-pack parachute. That had caused me to sit lower in the cockpit than I was used to and thus the plane seemed to be more "cocked up" than it really was.

The hairiest adventure, at least while it was happening, took place on 23 February 1950, the day before my 21st birthday. It occurred as a result of the fact that the last duty a Corsair would be assigned to would be the Carrier Qualification Training Unit. Instead of undergoing the stress of landing once for every hour or two of flight time those planes would undergo it several times an hour, day in, day out, week in, week out. Add to that the fact that carrier landings are, if any thing, even harder on a plane than ordinary field landings. After months of that kind of abuse, a plane was not fit for anything else. Well, on one FCLP hop, after a normal landing, when I added power and took off I discovered I couldn't trim my ailerons and I couldn't pick up the flaps. The plane wanted to roll to the right. It took all I could do to keep the wings level. I looked out at my right wing and discovered that the entire outer panel, from the gull to the tip, had several extra degrees of attack! The spar had actually twisted as a result of metal fatigue and failure.