In article ,
hobo wrote:
In article ,
(ANDREW ROBERT BREEN) wrote:

It's a story which has been around a long time, though

I read something about the Corsair having the first fully retracted and
enclosed landing gear in order to reduce drag. The same article said the

Maybe for Voight.. but plenty of aeroplanes had fully retracting 'carts
long long before. I'd guess the first would probabllt have been the
I-16, kicking on fofr a good 10 years before, but even such latecomers
as Hawker's Hurricane and Willi Messerschmidt's Bf109 had fully-retracting
undercarriages in 1934-ish.
Given that Voight were a clearly competant outfit - the Corsair being one
of the best aerial weapons* of WW2 - I doubt if they'd missed this one.

shorter gear resulting from the gull wing was necessary for the gear to
fully retract. The article said that if long gear was retracted sideways
it would reach into outer parts of the wing that were too narrow and if

Hmm. Not sure about that. Grumman managed the dame tricj with a deeper
fuselage. Hawker offered a navalised Typhoon at one point (a lovely
thought, given the rep. of the early Sabres , so they obviously figured
that it was possible to combine a 14' prop and folding wings without
bending the latter (come to that, what was the diameter of the prop on the
Sea Fury?).

My suspicion is that the truth lies in the rather slim fuselage of the
Corsair, plus a degree of (laudable) coservatism on Voight's behalf
- the blow-down gear for the undercart must have eaten into wing depth,
but it undoubtedly saved lives. OTOH the original hood design was /not/
a good one, nor was the undercart valveing..

*Weapon as distinct from aeroplane. Hans was always insistent on that
point. The Gladiator and the Fulmar were aeroplanes. The Corsair was a
weapon. The Tiger Moth was an abomination.

--
Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group
http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/
"Who dies with the most toys wins" (Gary Barnes)