The F4U Corsair looks bent for a reason. Every strange line on this aircraft is the answer to a mechanical problem that had no conventional solution. In 1938, Rex Beisel and the Vought team set out to wrap the smallest possible airframe around the largest engine available: the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp, an 18-cylinder twin-row radial producing 2,000 hp. Converting that power into thrust demanded a three-blade Hamilton Standard propeller roughly 13 ft 4 in across. That single number drove the entire design. The engineering chain reaction: - Ground clearance: a propeller that large needs the nose held high, which on a straight wing means very long main gear legs - Carrier loads: long gear legs are heavy and weak under arrested landings, an unacceptable trade on a carrier fighter - The fix: the inverted gull wing, which drops the wing root low, letting short, stiff gear sit at the lowest point of the bend - Gear stowage: each leg rotates 90 degrees while retracting rearward, s...