Kalamazoo Air Zoo

[Travis Butler]

One more look at childhood favorites... the F4U Corsair.


20250526-SDIM5746 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

This one I have to blame on a 70s TV show, Baa Baa Black Sheep/Black Sheep Squadron, about the group of Marine pilots led by Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington during the Solomons campaign of WWII. I'm not sure if nine-year-old me realized how cheesy it was, but the opening theme embedded itself as a 'call to action!' leitmotif at a very early age, and it stuck. Even Adult Me can appreciate how they got so many classic old planes flying for the aerial scenes.


20250526-SDIM5757 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

It did also have the unusual gull-wing design to set it apart - made it almost instantly identifiable, even for people who'd just seen the TV show.


20250531-SDIM6919 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

There's apparently a lot of people who gin up a rivalry between the Corsair and the Hellcat - they used the same engine and offered lots of points to argue about concerning which was the better plane. The Hellcat was cheaper. The Corsair had higher performance. The Hellcat was easier to fly for new pilots. The Corsair lasted longer in service after the war ended. Etc., etc., etc. I admit the Corsair got a place in my heart as a kid, but they're both great planes, and I try to value them both.

Oh, and see that engine in the middle? Remember it in a few moments.


20250531-SDIM6934 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

As the nameplate notes, this particular Corsair was built by Goodyear as a second source, because Vought couldn't produce them fast enough. Goodyear also did some of its own design work, including one of the craziest piston fighters of that or any other time.

Remember this monster engine from the B-36?


20250530-SDIM6561 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

Goodyear actually put one of these engines into a Corsair.

Goodyear F2G Corsair - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It came at the end of the war, too late to go into production. Two examples survive today, and I'd love to see one of them in person.

 

[Travis Butler]

Speaking of odd experimental planes...


20250526-SDIM5693 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

Meet the Curtiss XP-55 Ascender.

The pusher/canard/rear wing configuration surfaces every so often; there was the Shinden in WWII, along with some others, and one that actually made it to volume production was the Beech Starship - which went on sale in the 1980s. But they never seem to be all that successful.


20250526-SDIM5699 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

Did their unusual look play a part?


20250526-SDIM5814 by Travis Butler, on Flickr


20250531-SDIM6883 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

I think it's kind of a shame; there's something refreshing about thinking outside the box.


20250531-SDIM6876 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

 

[Travis Butler]

20250531-SDIM6855 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

The F-8 Crusader is an odd situation... I took a bunch of pics of it not because I like it, but because I don't really care for it, and am trying to be fair.


20250531-SDIM6857 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

And this is the main offender - with very few exceptions, I don't like jets with a large nose-mounted intake like this. It spoils the streamlining for me.


20250526-SDIM5833 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

The slab sides don't really help.


20250531-SDIM6848 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

If the F-104 is like a stiletto, the F-8 feels like a chisel - flat and with little finesse.


20250531-SDIM6859 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

I do, admittedly, like it from this angle; it reminds me of some of the NASA lifting body designs.


20250526-SDIM5835 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

One of the interesting things about the Crusader is visible at the left. To get better take-off and landing performance for carrier use, Vought designed the wing to pivot up along the rear edge. Angling the wing gave more lift when it's being catapulted into the air, and reduced the landing speed while keeping the fuselage level for the pilot's view.

 

[The Rigger]

That's a blast from the past. More years ago than I care to admit to, I built a flying model of the Dornier DO-335 Arrow. (Well... For certain rather abstract values of the word "flying"...)

 

[Travis Butler]

Hidden Identity


20250526-SDIM5679 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

So, does this look familiar to any warbird enthusiasts? It ought to...


20250526-SDIM5682 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

Admittedly the blue paint job is not what most people expect to see...

The Buchon is actually a Spanish license-built copy of the Messerschmitt BF-109, one of the most prolifically-built fighters of World War II - although it had considerable detail changes for Spanish production, and didn't actually go into service until after WWII was over.


20250531-SDIM6958 by Travis Butler, on Flickr


20250531-SDIM6957 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

A four-bladed propellor was one of the notable changes, to go with the less-visible engine change (one of the things that delayed production).

Like many of the other Air Zoo planes, it's a bit of a weird bird.

 

[Travis Butler]

Another one I wasn't really sure where to put.


20250526-SDIM5688 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

The P-47 Thunderbolt shares a distinction with the BF-109 as one of the most-produced fighters in history; more than 15,600 were built by the time production ended, in a wide number of variants. In other ways it was very different; the 109 is a relatively slender and light aircraft...


20250526-SDIM5684 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

The P-47 is not.


20250526-SDIM5686 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

It shared an engine with the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair, above; like the Corsair, the design philosophy was to pick a big powerful engine, with a big propellor to use that power, and wrap the smallest fuselage around it they could. Obviously the results were different. ^^;; One big reason is that the Corsair was a naval fighter, where combat normally took place at low altitude; the P-47 was designed with bomber escort in mind, so they included a big honkin' turbosupercharger to improve performance at the high altitudes where bombers flew. The turbosupercharger and its ducting took up a big part of the fuselage.



Also, after an earlier design had a problem with overheating, the designer Alexander Kartveli made sure to give the engine plenty of airflow.


20250526-SDIM5811 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

The end result was one of the heaviest fighters of WWII, at around 8 tons when fully loaded.

The P-47 started as a bomber escort and fighter; and while it did well in that role, it gained more fame as a ground-attack fighter. Despite the complex turbosupercharger, it proved a very rugged and reliable aircraft, soaking up battle damage that would have taken down other planes; the eight machine guns hit hard; bomb pylons were added; and later upgrades added unguided rockets to the punch.


20250526-SDIM5688v1.dng by Travis Butler, on Flickr

It wasn't always loved - some pilots didn't care for the size and weight - but it was memorable enough to get name-checked here:

 

[CharlesH]

I knew a guy many years that flew P-47s, mostly as bomber escort. He had to ditch one 47 in the English Channel; and got another one. After 50 missions he was eligible to return home; they offered him a big promotion to stay, and he did not, returned to the States and never looked back.

 

[Travis Butler]

I knew a guy many years that flew P-47s, mostly as bomber escort. He had to ditch one 47 in the English Channel; and got another one. After 50 missions he was eligible to return home; they offered him a big promotion to stay, and he did not, returned to the States and never looked back.

Another person who sounds like they'd have great tales to tell!

 

[Travis Butler]

Next to last post...


20250531-SDIM6950 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

I mentioned I wasn't all that attentive to the Zoo's section on space - but that's mostly because they didn't have much in the way of genuine artifacts, and I've been to several other museums that did have them.

Models like these Mercury/Gemini capsules, and informational displays like the one in the background, are mostly what they had. (The rocket motor on the left is an actual artifact, though!)


20250531-SDIM6940 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

They also had a genuine moon rock, and one of the clean boxes NASA used to handle lunar samples without contamination. For someone who's seen actual flown hardware, though - like the Kansas Cosmosphere that has Liberty Bell 7, Gemini X, and the Apollo 13 command module Odyssey - it's not as interesting.


20250526-SDIM5787 by Travis Butler, on Flickr
Some nice minor exhibits, but, well, minor.


20250526-SDIM5794 by Travis Butler, on Flickr
(See Iron Man in the background?)


20250526-SDIM5791 by Travis Butler, on Flickr


20250526-SDIM5780 by Travis Butler, on Flickr

A couple of genuine artifacts did pique my interest, though...


Chopper-Kabong by Travis Butler, on Flickr

NASA's original plan for the Gemini spacecraft was to glide it to a landing with an inflatable wing:



To test this, they built a boilerplate gliding capsule - El Kabong.


El Kabong by Travis Butler, on Flickr

Sadly for the 8-year-old me who read this article, they decided the plan was a little too complicated and switched to the same ocean landing as Mercury and Apollo. But the El Kabong is still there as a legacy!


Recovery Copter by Travis Butler, on Flickr

Another legacy is the helicopter they used to recover astronauts from that water landing. The HUP-3 represented here was used during the early Mercury missions, while a larger helicopter was used for Gemini and Apollo.