How many two-seat F4U/FG-1 Corsair conversions?

[Paul Stroud]

AFAIK the only surviving FAA clipped wing Corsair is KD431 at Yeovilton

Picture from Alan Wilson on Flickr

Vought Corsair IV ‘KD431’ by Alan Wilson, on Flickr

[menards]

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/data/a ... 338df8.jpg

the proposed two seat trainer variant was interesting. The fuselage tank was deleted and the second seat added in its place, putting the second seat about where the cockpit was on the prototype. Would look good with a bubble canopy....

[Warbird Kid]

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/data/attachments/68/68719-4319e514e6938e5b66e9237f46338df8.jpg

the proposed two seat trainer variant was interesting. The fuselage tank was deleted and the second seat added in its place, putting the second seat about where the cockpit was on the prototype. Would look good with a bubble canopy....

Maybe at that point, we'd see a FG-1A with a bubble canopy. You loose the wartime look, but it would probably be the best platform for a two seater / dual control.

[marine air]

I got a ride with Howard Pardue in his F4U-4 when I was eighteen. Every morning at Oshkosh he would go fly about thirty minutes and practice for the afternoon airshow. He warned me "everyone gets sick in the back seat, there are a lot of fumes." I think we met at 0830 , he took off on the east west runway and flew over to an area east of Fon'Du Lac near the lake. We got jumped by five T-28s and then Bill Harrison in one of the two Skyraiders he owned at the time. They were sort of dogfighting or sorts with lots of aerobatics. The T-28s were on a photo shoot of some sort. His back seat was configured so that cleco fasteners held the front seat in place and had to be removed to tilt the seat forward for the back seater to ingress or egress. (My dad's Cavalier Mustang had the same arrangement.) It seemed easy enough. The only view from the back seat were the wingtips, the back of his helmet and then whatever you could see from his two mirrors.
I did get blasted a couple of times with fumes and seems like it was during the taxi, or early part of the flight. Fumes plus aerobatics were a little rough. I promised not to get sick and didn't. It was so worth it to get a flight in a Corsair. I don't remember having an intercom but may have had headsets. A couple of years later when he was flying low level and the engine quit out in Texas he had to put it down on a farm and it broke into a few pieces including right in that second seat area. He was thrown in his seat 150'. However, he got out of the seat, brushed himself off and walked over to the farmers house to make a call. That was before cell phones were popular.
MY dad had a business in Orlando, Florida in the 1970's. He bought a ride in Burchinal's two seat F4U. Burchinal moved some of his aircraft there for several months but the business didn't really take off. The rear seat area was completed with peeling paint over plywood and a single sheet of plexiglas. MY dad held me up. There was so much oil on the wings and both sides of the fuselage that we couldn't get up on the wing. Overall, the Burchinal type rear would offer the most visibility. My memory is it was dual control but I may be wrong. The B-17 was there as was a couple of the bombers and maybe the F-9G Cougar. Anyway, everything was cosmetically ratty and covered in lots of oil and hydraulic fluids.

[Chris Brame]

I found another; N9153Z/BuNo 88365 - don't know how the conversion was done but the pilot and his son were killed in a crash in Ann Arbor, MI on June 15, 1965.

(Image from Ann Arbor District Library - aadl.org)

Aircraft struck ground while flying low lost control crashed and caught fire. Damaged a parked Mooney N5665Q during low pass. Pilot blood alcohol value 0.24%

[DH82EH]

Hold my beer.
Watch this!

[Lon Moer]

Vought did make a prototype.....

[Zac Yates]

Vought did make a prototype.....

2seatCorsair.jpeg

True, which I mentioned in the original post (would be neat to see someone do a replica...)

Vought flew a trainer demonstrator during the war