Warbird Information Exchange

Gotta love the bird cage...

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"There was no such thing as a bad day when you have a door knob on the inside of the door."

Cmdr. Paul Edward Galanti -retired

That is a nice shot, I really wish there was still that Bird Cage Cosair flying around somewhere. Maybe someday someone can drag it back out into the light of day and give it a new lease on life. I really wish I could have seen it.

Tim

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www.tailhookstudio.com

Unfortunately Tim, TAM in Brazil isn't likely to relenquish ownership of the "Birdcage" since it was a gift from Pratt & Whitney. I'm sure it was part of an engine deal. Probably a little something to "sweeten" the deal.
Same thing P&W did with the MATS Connie. Part of an engine deal and never to be seen in the skies again, especially here in the US!

It's a shame, we couldn't even get a small token donation from P&W, Hamilton or UTC when we did the "Corsairs Over Connecticut" Show last year. Sikorsky was the only one to help with 5K.
I guess it's the way with Corporate America today! Maybe we should've placed an order for some engines and then cancelled it!
Jerry

Hi Guys,

SWEET photo. Thanks for posting this one. Quick question though. At one point I thought that there was a "Birdcage" Corsair in flyable condition down in Australia. Is it still there and if so is it still airworthy ?? And, as a follow-up to this question, are there any other "Birdcage" corsairs left in the world, and if so, where ?

Paul

Paul
It was in New Zealand until sold to someone in Brazil. The rest of the story is really fuzzy to me and I don’t know if it is even the correct story so I will not try to tell it. I’ll let someone who knows tell it and refrain from creating any confusion.

I’d love to know also if any more “Bird Cage” Corsairs are in the pipeline to be saved or hanging out in the shadows anywhere.

Here is the bird I'm referring too.
http://www.warbirdregistry.org/corsairr ... 17995.html

A interesting side note I heard was that the POF Corsair was build as a birdcage but at some point was converted to a new style canopy.


Tim

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www.tailhookstudio.com

I'm not 100% certain but I think the PoF airplane was built with the canopy that it has on it now, which is the early blown hood with the additional bracing. Up until it was repainted a few years ago it carried the later style blown hood without the additional bracing. I could be wrong but I don't think it was ever a birdcage.

I could have my canopy's confused, I've been wrong once before.

Anyone have any idea why the Canopy with the bracing is not on it now, I really liked it when it had it on it.

Tim

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www.tailhookstudio.com

OK, I went back and looked at pics of the PoF Corsair and apparently it does NOT have the canopy with the extra bracing on it currently. I was sure that I'd seen it on there but maybe I just heard rumor that they were thinking of putting it back on or something. Anyway, the Corsair on the bottom of the profile below shows the bracing I'm talking about, which is on the sliding portion of the canopy and passes over the pilot's head.

A few notes about VMF-124. It was Pappy Boyington's first command as a major. He got drunk, broke an ankle, was taken off of flight status, and so a replacement C.O. was found. He was the C.O for about 30 days.
VMF-124 was Ken Walsh's squadron, aka "Marines Dream" paint scheme of the Corsair formerly owned by Ray Dieckman. I think the Sper Corsair built up by Planes of Fame that crashed in Phoenix may have been an F4U-1A.They were the very first aircraft squadron to fly the Corsair, the F4U-1 not 1A. And of course they had later variants. I think they may have transferred eventually from COrsairs to A-4 B's or C's and were redesignated an attack squadron. The patch for unit consists of a yellow background, blue corsair wings, a skull above the wings and red arrows, (5 or 6) pointing downward. Translation; "WHistling Death from Above" . I served in VMA-124 in the 1980's and we were referred as the "Skull Squadron" and tail letters were Q P . We had A-4 E/upgraded to F's and TA-4J's . When the unit was disbanded around 1990 they had A-4M's.
We had a skull stencil we used to spray paint on visiting aircraft's drop tanks after the pilot had gotten in and cinched down the seatbelts and pulled the pins on the seat!!

actually Boyington commanded VMF-122 until Joe Smoak relieved him following the drunken wrestling match where he had his leg broken.

Has i recall, POF has always claimed their F4U is a -1 that originally had the birdcage canopy but was later brought up to -1A standards. I also believe someone stated that it has the plexi view port under the fuselage. Althought this doesn't necessarly mean it's a -1 (it could be a early -1A) over to the experts.
BTW it has the worst tri-tone paint job I've ever seen!

That paint scheme wasn't even close to the F4U-1s and F4U-4s that Walsh actually flew. It's imagination gone wild!

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Don't touch my junk!!

It originally had the birdcage but flipped over during the war and was rebuilt by Vought to the later canopy spec. I have been told it is the oldest extant Corsair.

Over Wanaka and now sadly missed....

I think the speculation about the POF's "birdcage" heritage comes from the fact that the Brazilian Corsair (17995) has a birdcage canopy and a later Bureau Number. That would seem to peg the POF Corsair (17799) as a bircage model for sure...except that the Brazilian bird began life as an F4U-1A, and was retrofitted with the F4U-1 "birdcage" canopy by Harry Doan.

Doan retrieved the plane as a derelict in Provo, Utah where the previous owner had essentially stuck an F4U-1 canopy over the cockpit in place of its original 'blown' -1A canopy. The -1A windscreen was still in place, and the indented areas found on the aft fuselage just behind the cockpit on the later birdcage Corsairs was not present either. Doan added those, and retrofitted an early F4U-1 windscreen so he could properly fit what was essentially an oddball canopy that had somehow ended up with the derelict plane.

The POF plane is most definitely the oldest Corsair you will ever see fly (pending the restoration of Lex Cralley's F3A-1 anyway). Now that the Brazilian Corsair is essentially grounded, there are no "early" Corsairs flying anymore. The second oldest Corsair flying is Rod Lewis' FG-1D (#29) just purchased from Tony Raftis, which is definitely a solid step up the Corsair lineage chain from the POF's early bird.

The only surviving & intact F4U-1 "birdcage" Corsair that I know of is the one slowly rotting away at the bottom of Lake Michigan. This was one of the many planes ditched inthe lake during training exercises. It would seem like a ace in the hole for the Navy Historical Center to have it recovered for display in the Navy museum, but alas is still resides at the lake bottom.

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Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.com
http://www.robmears.com

The POF F4U is B/N 17999 which makes it a -1A NOT a -1. It has the plexi view port on the underside of the fuselage which early -1As had. POF may have construed this to mean it's a -1 and had a birdcage canopy but that is incorrect thinking.

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Don't touch my junk!!

I have to take issue with Jack on a couple of points. Somewhere in Boyington's book it mentions him passing through VMF-124, couldn't find it last night but there are plenty of websites that also make that claim on Google. Second, it was his ankle not leg and the squadron wasn't VMF-122 but VMF-222 (page 116).
There was another instance where he broke a leg when he jumped in the bushes behind a bar , and the bushes turned out to be tree tops and a cliff!! (maybe when in the AVG ??)
He served briefly as C.O in name only of more than six squadrons, see page 121-122. He says it ws in name only, just a paper shuffle. He explains in the book what was going on with squadrons coming back, squadron personnel awaiting aircraft, rotations, etc. during 1943, see pages 104 -155. Hope this explains it.