The Vought F4U Corsair is one of the fighter-planes that can seriously apply to the title "best fighter of WW II", at the very least it was the best fighter-bomber, with cannons, bombs and rockets as its best assets.

Developed as V.166A after the need of the US Navy in 1938 for a high performance carrier fighter.

The designers produced the smallest possible airframe around the most powerful engine available at that time the 1.491 kW Pratt & Whitney XR-2800 Double Wasp 'Radial-engine'. The engine demanded a propeller with a large diameter, and to be able to keep that propeller far enough from the ground the designers choose to make an upward facing wing that made it possible to use a 'normal' size landing gear, and the height of the plane would be as low as possible with it's wings folded upwards on the flight deck.

The V.166B prototype flew for the first time in May 1940 as the XF4U-1  and after a turbulent period in witch the US Navy denied permission for operations from aircraft-carriers until the British had preformed them from their smaller ships, the type came in use as the F4U-1.

Until the early Fifties the total production was 12.571 airframes, the most important versions were:

- F4U-1 (758 produced)

- F4U-1A (2.066 produced, with all-glass canopy)

- F4U-1C (200 produced, with 4x 20 mm. cannons in stead of machineguns under it's wings.

- F4U-1D (1.375 produced, fighter/bomber)

- F4U-1P (photo-recon version of the F4U-1)

- FG-1 (1.704 produced by Goodyear)

- FG-1D (2.302 produced also by Goodyear)

- FG-1E (Night fighter by Goodyear)

- F3A-1 and F3A-1D (735 produced by Brewster)

- F4U-4 (2.351 produced with 1.827 kW R-2800-18W(C) engine)