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Rob Mears, this Corsair ring any bells?

Sun Aug 01, 2004 1:54 am

The below quote was taken off of a modeling site. Have you any information regarding this airframe? Just wondering. Regards, Chad Veich.

>>>"I am pretty much a sucker for ANY Corsair, having discovered a REAL Corsair in 1971 while snorkeling 1/4 mile off the coast of Okinawa. Other than having the nose stuck in the soft sandy bottom, the plane was pretty intact - I wonder if anyone ever pulled her out."<<<

Sun Aug 01, 2004 7:19 am

I don't have any record of that one in particular, and I'd love to know more about it. I wonder if the guy has any photos or records of its actual location?

There's a similar wreck documented on the Ayiasu Reef approximately two miles south of the island of Babeldaoeb in the Palau Island chain, but that's quite a ways away from the location he describes. The Ayiasu Reef Corsair resides in about three feet of water at low tide.

As I come across their information, I try to document as many of the salt water wrecks as I can. There are hundreds of Corsair wrecks littered across the South Pacific, though I imagine a large portion of them were shredded from high impact crashes and such. Okinawa alone must have over 100 by itself (including my Uncle E. Wendell Langston's F4U-1D BuNo.82230)

I took the time a while back to transfer all of the WWII out-of-country Corsair loss records from microfilm into MS Excel file format and trust me, a LOT of Corsairs were written off while serving in the SoPac. If that's something you'd be interested in checking out, I can e-mail you the docuement. It's pretty staggering!

Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:31 pm

Rob has graciously allowed me to post the excel file of his loss list in the WIX downloads section which can be reached here

http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/wix/wixdownloads.html

Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:37 pm

So far I see two F4U-2, Wait I'm going to bring up this subject




Sorry :oops:

Tue Aug 03, 2004 10:19 pm

Rob, thanks for sharing the list. Seeing all the loses listed in one place certainly puts things into perspective.

Wed Aug 04, 2004 7:27 pm

Yes Rob, thanks for sharing your info. Regards, Chad Veich.
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