F4U Corsair vs F8F Bearcat: The Fighter That Fought the War vs the One That Missed It

Corsair vs Bearcat at a glance

The spec widget above compares size, weight and performance. This table covers what it does not: who built each fighter, when it flew and what it did.

The F4U Corsair: the gull-winged fighter that fought the Pacific war

The F4U Corsair was built around the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp. When the prototype was finished it had the biggest and most powerful engine, the largest propeller and probably the largest wing of any naval fighter to date, and that propeller needed ground clearance.

Vought solved it with the inverted gull wing. It shortened the landing gear struts needed to keep the propeller off the ground, and it became the Corsair’s trademark.

The Corsair was fast. On October 1, 1940, the prototype became the first single-engine U.S. fighter to fly faster than 400 mph, averaging 405 mph (652 km/h) between Stratford and Hartford.

It was also hard to land on a carrier. The long nose, the bounce in its landing gear and the torque of the engine caught out new pilots, and naval aviators nicknamed it the “Ensign Eliminator.”

The U.S. Navy leaned on the easier-to-land F6F Hellcat at first, and only approved the Corsair for shipboard use in April 1944. The Marines flew it from land bases from February 1943, and the Royal Navy had cleared it for carrier operations well before the U.S. Navy did.

Once it was sorted, the Corsair did enormous work. U.S. figures show it flew 64,051 operational sorties in World War II, and its pilots claimed 2,140 air combat victories against 189 losses to enemy aircraft, a claimed ratio of better than 11 to 1. Much of that flying later shifted to ground attack.

Infantrymen called it the “Sweetheart of the Marianas” and the “Angel of Okinawa.” The Corsair went on to fly in the Korean War and the French wars in Indochina and Algeria, and its 1942 to 1953 production run was the longest of any U.S. piston-engine fighter.

The F8F Bearcat: the hot rod that arrived too late

The F8F Bearcat started with a conversation at Pearl Harbor on June 23, 1942. Battle of Midway veteran Jimmie Thach told Grumman executive Jake Swirbul that the most important thing in a fighter was climb rate.

Grumman’s answer was the smallest, lightest airframe it could wrap around the R-2800 Double Wasp. The Bearcat was designed as a successor to Grumman’s own Hellcat, not to the Corsair, and the Navy ordered two prototypes on November 27, 1943.

It had a bubble canopy, a first on a U.S. Navy fighter, and a fuselage about 5 feet (1.5 m) shorter than the Hellcat’s.

Grumman also designed the wingtips to snap off above 7.5 g, to save weight. That idea did not survive service, because a single tip could break away and put the aircraft at risk.

The performance was real. An unmodified production F8F-1 set a time-to-climb record in 1946, reaching 10,000 feet (3,048 m) in 94 seconds, and the record stood for 10 years until a jet fighter broke it.

In 1948 Grumman introduced the F8F-2, with a modified engine cowling, a taller fin and rudder, and the more powerful R-2800-30W engine. A total of 293 F8F-2s were built, along with 12 night fighters and 60 reconnaissance versions.

Deliveries began in 1945, but World War II ended before the Bearcat saw combat. Its first combat came in the French Indochina War, where nearly 200 Bearcats delivered to the French in 1951 flew mostly ground support.

Which was the better dogfighter?

The Bearcat. It was built from the start around climb rate, and in its first flight tests it was marginally slower than the Corsair but more maneuverable and quicker to climb.

The Corsair carried its own advantages. It was a bigger aircraft with a far longer production run, and it proved itself against the Japanese Zero, which it could outperform except in slow-speed maneuverability and slow-speed rate of climb.

The Bearcat also pushed piston-engine limits long after the war. Rare Bear, a heavily modified F8F, set a 3 km world speed record for piston-driven aircraft of 528.33 mph (850.26 km/h) in 1989.

Which was the better fighter in history?

The Corsair, and it is not close. It fought through the Solomon Islands, Rabaul, Okinawa and the Korean War, with 12,571 built, and it was still in combat in 1969.

The Bearcat had a shorter story. Only 1,265 were built, production ended in 1949, and the last U.S. Bearcats were withdrawn in 1952 as jets such as the F9F Panther took over.

The Bearcat did earn a place as an air show star. The Blue Angels adopted it as their second demonstration aircraft in 1946, replacing the Hellcat, and flew it until the team was disbanded in 1950 during the Korean War.

For the Bearcat’s predecessor, read our F6F Hellcat vs F8F Bearcat comparison. For the other Navy rivalry, see F4U Corsair vs F6F Hellcat.

So which one wins?

For a dogfight in 1945, take the Bearcat. For the war that actually happened, take the Corsair.

The Corsair was bigger, fought longer and proved itself in the Pacific. The Bearcat was lighter and quicker to climb, but it never got the war it was built for.

For more fighters from that era, see our guide to the most famous aircraft of WWII.