Quote:
Originally Posted by h0MbrE
I'll give that a try. One thing I'm wondering is what you mean by "the engine gave in". How long did this take? The corsair was able to travel fairly decent distances at this speed without a problem. This is taken from Wikipedia:
"On 1 October, the XF4U-1 became the first single-engine U.S. fighter to fly faster than 400 mph (640 km/h) by setting an average ground speed of 405 miles per hour (652 km/h) during a flight from Stratford to Hartford."
That's over 50 miles from wheels up to wheels down. That is a pretty sustained distance and I'm sure they weren't blowing their engine to do it.
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XF4U-1 is hardly a battle ready aircraft with wepons and all the imperfections of mass series production. Record setting aircraft are usually stripped of all unecessary equipment, perfectly maintained and aerodynamically cleanedw, which is hardly the case of combat aircraft that never achieve factory data and hardly so data of some record setting aircraft. I wonder what the result would be with a corsair having flown 5 missions in PTO loaded with guns, amno and maintained in the field.