Vought F4U Corsair Ramjet

In 1943 the US Navy was looking for ways to boost the performance of their fighter aircraft. Although the new jet engines showed a lot of promise, they were still suffering from a lot of teething problems.

Also the high fuel consumption of the jet engines of the day made them unsuitable for carrier use.


At the same time in Britain the V-1 attacks were mounting and from a number of crashed V-1s the British reconstituted a number of pulse jet engines sending some of them to the USA for testing.

As a result of these tests the US government ordered a production run of 240 copies of the Argus engines from Pratt & Whitney. They received the designation J014-01


The Vought company received a number of the pre-production engines and designed a pulse jet powered version of the F4U Corsair. To save time a minimal redesign was done to the original design.

This fighter had four J014 pulse jet engines mounted on the wings. Because there was no longer an engine in the nose, a solid nose was installed with 8 machine guns. These together with the six wing mounted guns provided an enormous fire power.

Because the pulse engines required an airflow to develop thrust the aircraft were launched using a jet rocket pack which was jettisoned after take-off.


The first 12 Pulse Corsairs were designated F4U-9 and were delivered to the Navy in the beginning of 1945 and were tested on the carrier USS Hornet. They flew a number of patrols over Okinawa but never had any actual combat.


Last updated: 13/08/2017