People still don't understand how to fly tail draggers

[Chock 17,769]

18 hours ago, Fielder said:

The Corsair would never have been approved for WWII duty if it was that difficult to take off and land like the MilViz version.

In fact the Corsair was not approved for WW2 duty in some applications, precisely because of problems with landing it. Whilst the prototype first flew in 1940 and was impressive enough to warrant production approval, and it was subsequently put into service two years later when the US Navy received its first ones in Summer 1942, such were the problems with it that it it was not approved for carrier operations in US service for quite a while, it wasn't fully deployed on US aircraft carriers until 1944 in fact. This is why the Marines flew it a lot, since they could deploy to Pacific island land bases as part of their normal remit. Because of this, quite a lot of Corsairs were built without the automatic wing-fold mechanism, or had it locked out from use, since they were not at that point approved for carrier ops. The catapult hooks and arrestor hooks were also frequently removed; this reduced the weight of the aeroplane by a fair amount too as a bonus. 

Concurrent with this, three Navy units were actually equipped with the F4U, one in late 1942 and two more in mid 1943, but this was more of an experiment and two of these units subsequently switched to the F6F. The US Navy favoured the F6F Hellcat for carrier ops even though it was not as impressive in overall performance, but it was easier to operate from carriers and far better suited to smaller escort carriers, largely because of its much slower landing approach speed and nicer manners upon touchdown on a carrier deck. The F6F was also cheaper than the Corsair as well and easier to build and repair. 

Corsairs gained some gallows-humour nicknames including the Widow-maker and Ensign eliminator, but in retrospect, such reputational nicknames do serve to highlight things to watch out for, and so they probably save lives whilst being amusing crew-room banter.

So as noted, the Corsair was for a long time only a Marine aeroplane in US service, operated from land bases. In the interim, the British Fleet Air Arm were operating their Corsairs from carriers, and this was fairly instrumental in developing techniques for the Corsair, some of which are still standard practices for modern carrier ops, including a curved approach. Sharing their experiences and reports with the manufacturer led to modifications to the design, including a bleed valve to counter the vicious rebound of the main gear oleos upon landing, locking down the top cowling gills to prevent oil spattering on the windscreen, and the addition of the turbulator vane on the right wing just near the gun ports, to enable the right wing to stall at the same time as the left one, which helped to counter the possibility of a tendency to enter a left spin at low approach speeds and to make the thing less likely to enter a torque-roll when ramming the throttle wide open, which is something the other really high performance big US fighter in WW2, the P-47 Thunderbolt, could also do. It's worth noting too that the Brits also raised the seat in the Corsair to improve the view upon approach and owing to limited hangar space, they also clipped the wings of their Corsairs by eight inches, which made them less likely to float when touching down on their carriers, and it may possibly have improved the roll rate a little too, as well as reducing the weight a little bit. The initial design of the cockpit canopy on the Corsair also made things a bit difficult for carrier landings too, so that was also changed.

In spite of initial problems, the Corsair was undoubtedly one of the best fighter aeroplanes of WW2, certainly one of the fastest and toughest. By way of example, one victory from a Marine Corsair pilot, whose guns were jammed owing to extreme cold up at altitude, involved him flying up behind a Japanese Twin-engined recon bomber and deliberately using his propeller to saw off its tail, which he succeeded in doing and gained a Navy Cross for his action; it resulted in him losing a few inches off his Corsair's propeller, but his aeroplane was otherwise undamaged and was able to return to base. The very first ever Corsair ace, 2/Lt Ken Walsh, gained 21 victories in WW2 and 17 of those were against the Mitsubishi A6M 'Zero', but it's worth noting that in doing so, he was himself shot down three times and lost five aeroplanes in combat (or four depending on how you look at it), one which he was landing back at base, which lost control on the rollout and ploughed into another Corsair, destroying that one as well to make up the five. Thus even the best Corsair pilots were not invulnerable to danger, even when they'd figured out how best to operate the thing.

So it was a very good aeroplane, one of the best in WW2 (and Korea and Vietnam for that matter) but it isn't true to say that it didn't have any difficult issues when it entered service.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Chock

[Pathfinder633 223]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compleat-Taildragger-Pilot-Harvey-Plourde/dp/0963913700

 

[Dominique_K 10,149]

A delightful « How to fly the Cub » of the 40s

https://home.adelphi.edu/~allendon/fly_a_cub.pdf

 I love the last page.

 

 

 

[Chock 17,769]

22 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

A delightful « How to fly the Cub » of the 40s

https://home.adelphi.edu/~allendon/fly_a_cub.pdf

 I love the last page.

Interesting how a few of those hand signals have changed their meaning over the years.

[Fielder 3,679]

Widow-maker and Ensign eliminator sound about right compared to other WWII fighters.

Everything is relative. I wonder how many of us at least somewhat experienced sim pilots here have flown this Corsair in MSFS and experienced a fatal flight, very early on with that particular plane. I wonder how many here have flown other planes and never experienced any fatal flights when paying reasonable attention. I wonder how many nations in real life would approve a plane in which most of their reasonably good pilots experienced fatal flights early on in their training.

One thing to consider is whether sim piloting is very much harder than real piloting, even for reasonably good pilots. I would guess yes sim piloting is harder (I was never a licensed pilot IRL).

[Chock 17,769]

1 hour ago, Fielder said:

Everything is relative. I wonder how many of us at least somewhat experienced sim pilots here have flown this Corsair in MSFS and experienced a fatal flight, very early on with that particular plane. I wonder how many here have flown other planes and never experienced any fatal flights when paying reasonable attention. I wonder how many nations in real life would approve a plane in which most of their reasonably good pilots experienced fatal flights early on in their training.

True. Safety is subject to the requirements of the service sometimes, and especially in warfare. The cold hard reality of the Second World War was that, quite apart from the objective of actually dropping bombs on targets, the secondary objective was to draw up the defensive fighter planes to shoot down those planes in large numbers and kill their pilots, so that eventually the enemy would be defenceless.

Germany, Japan and Italy all favoured a short war where attrition would not come into it, but the Allies, even though they did not say it, knew that they could afford to lose considerably more aeroplanes and men than the Axis could, and so they were less concerned about aircrew losses. It's not that they didn't care about those aeroplanes and crews, they were simply aware that it was not a critical factor to lose as many as the enemy might when trying to reduce the enemy's forces to dust. In such circumstances, slightly iffy characteristics can and often are forgiven when accepting a new weapon into service.

You only have to look at the Sopwith F.1 Camel in WW1 to know this is the unfortunate reality which wartime pilots face; the Camel was the most successful fighter of the war in terms of aerial victories, but there were far more pilots killed in accidents whilst flying it than there were who were killed by being shot down in one of them, owing to its propensity for going into a spin at low altitude when landing or taking off, thanks to the gyroscopic effect of revving its engine at low speeds. And this at a time when many pilots were unaware of what exactly a spin was, or how to recover from one. Like the Corsair, the Camel was an aeroplane which was operated from carriers in its 2F.1 guise too.

This is why some overbuilt (by wartime standards) and more expensive aeroplanes, such as the F4U Corsair and the P-47 Thunderbolt, found themselves being second choice to other aeroplanes which were inferior to them but cheaper and quicker to make. If you check out the average combat service life of a Corsair in the Pacific Theatre, most of them didn't make it anywhere near to 100 hours of operation before they were struck off charge, and some of them were lucky to make it to 20-30 hours. That's why they had to build nearly thirteen thousand of the things.

Oddly enough however, and contrary to what this above might suggest about warplanes not usually lasting a long time, Canadian WW1 ace Major William Barker, flew the exact same Sopwith Camel (B6313) for over a year, amassing 400+ hours on the thing in combat missions and shooting down just short of fifty aircraft with it in the process, including several balloons. As I recall, this is the longest amount of operational combat hours of any RAF fighter, so this does make one wonder about the notion of just exactly how hard a Camel is to fly if one is as fortunately aware of aerodynamics as we can be these days, or as gifted a pilot as William Barker evidently was.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Chock

[Fielder 3,679]

Yes, I have to admit the fact that the Camel was deployed pretty much proves dangerous to fly planes were not excluded by Allied pilots. Some of the other Sopwiths were easier to fly, as you know. And France lasted through WWI allowing them to buy excellent models into service. In Red Baron, I preferred to fly for France because I could rack of more victories with less danger to myself.

[JonP01 104]

On 7/9/2021 at 10:08 PM, Bobsk8 said:

If you think you are an accomplished sim pilot. try landing the A2A Texan in a crosswind. You will quickly find out the skills you are lacking. Hope they make it available in MSFS 2020. 

Or the Milviz Bobcat. Now that is the most stick (yoke in this case) and rudder taildragger I have ever simmed.

[cavaricooper 2,615]

@Dillon

A LOT of my real world flying has been in tail draggers- everything from a Cub and an Aeronca Champ to a DC-3.  I absolutely LOVE watching the scenery roll by framed by the Waco's wings.  It's ground handling is rubbish- period.  By far the best aeroplane Carenado has produced for MSFS is the Mooney.  With a couple of hours of development time, they could finish the Waco.  It still has a place in my hangar- but it's not even remotely a realistic TD ground handling simulation.

Respectfully- C

Edited July 17, 2021 by cavaricooper

[Dillon 2,197]

4 hours ago, cavaricooper said:

@Dillon

A LOT of my real world flying has been in tail draggers- everything from a Cub and an Aeronca Champ to a DC-3.  I absolutely LOVE watching the scenery roll by framed by the Waco's wings.  It's ground handling is rubbish- period.  By far the best aeroplane Carenado has produced for MSFS is the Mooney.  With a couple of hours of development time, they could finish the Waco.  It still has a place in my hangar- but it's not even remotely a realistic TD ground handling simulation.

Respectfully- C

What is the best representation of tail dragger handling have you seen in any sim?  Also in a general since do you feel FS2020 is doing a better job than what we've seen in the past (FSX, P3D, XPlane) or should I say on the right track? 

[cavaricooper 2,615]

The Waco wasn’t terrible in P3D. The Real Air Citabria series was really good. The Got Gravel stuff isn’t bad (but I’m biased).

Yes, MSFS is certainly on the right track- Carendo could most definitely fix the ground handling… the Waco flies pretty well (other than the inherent roll that a lot of MSFS aircraft still suffer from).

This will be a great sim.. it’s still blossoming… but the Waco issue is just sloppiness on Carenado’s part.

As far as Asobo- they just have to learn more isn’t always better- sometimes it’s just more.

Edited July 17, 2021 by cavaricooper

[lupedelupe 315]

The XCub is pretty good in MSFS: bring the tail up early, good yaw control.  

Which proves it's doable, just don't understand why Carenado cannot/will not fine-tune the Waco to perform similarly. 

[cavaricooper 2,615]

@lupedelupe

Agreed.  I really do wish that Asobo/MS would use some of their QC time to actually fly the addons, and reject sub-par submissions.  As I said earlier- the Waco flies quite nicely.  It's her ground handling that is abysmal.  Even the COG issue I moaned about in the initial release has not been fixed.  The effort required is minimal on Carenado's part, however, as long as Asobo/MS and we collectively do not hold their feet to the fire, there seems to be very little self motivation on their part which is a shame, because her wings do frame the sky beautifully.

C

[Republic3D 1,232]

I also am able to fly and enjoy the XCub and the other Cubs in MSFS.

But I'm struggling with the Waco and the C170 taildragger version. 

7 knots crosswind and it's impossible to not veer off the runway with maximum deflection on the rudder. I've tried sticking the tail wheel on the ground, I've tried lifting it as soon as I can. If real tail draggers were like this, there wouldn't be any in operation anymore. 

[Doug47 574]

On 7/17/2021 at 10:09 AM, Dillon said:

What is the best representation of tail dragger handling have you seen in any sim?  Also in a general since do you feel FS2020 is doing a better job than what we've seen in the past (FSX, P3D, XPlane) or should I say on the right track? 

Just admit it.  It is not that good and Carenado are average at best.