Corsair

A corsair (sometimes referred to as a buccaneer) is a privateer or a pirate.

Corsair may also refer to:

Military

Transportation

Air

Sea

The Corsair

The Corsair is a tale in verse by Lord Byron published in 1814 (see 1814 in poetry), which was extremely popular and influential in its day, selling ten thousand copies on its first day of sale. Its poetry, divided into cantos (like Dante's Divine Comedy), narrates the story of the corsair Conrad, how he was in his youth rejected by society because of his actions and his later fight against humanity (excepting women). In this tale the figure of Byronic hero is presented by the point of view of the people.

The opera Il Corsaro by Giuseppe Verdi, the overture Le Corsaire by Hector Berlioz and the ballet Le Corsaire by Adolphe Adam were based on this work.

Many Americans believed that Lord Byron's poem "The Corsair" was based on the life of the privateer/pirate Jean Lafitte; the work sold over 10,000 copies on its first day of publication.

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Vought F4U Corsair

The Chance Vought F4U Corsair was an American fighter aircraft that saw service primarily in World War II and the Korean War. Demand for the aircraft soon overwhelmed Vought's manufacturing capability, resulting in production by Goodyear and Brewster: Goodyear-built Corsairs were designated FG and Brewster-built aircraft F3A. From the first prototype delivery to the U.S. Navy in 1940, to final delivery in 1953 to the French, 12,571 F4U Corsairs were manufactured by Vought, in 16 separate models, in the longest production run of any piston-engined fighter in U.S. history (1942–53).

The Corsair was designed as a carrier-based aircraft. However its difficult carrier landing performance rendered the Corsair unsuitable for Navy use until the carrier landing issues were overcome when used by the British Fleet Air Arm. The Corsair thus came to and retained prominence in its area of greatest deployment: land based use by the U.S. Marines. The role of the dominant U.S. carrier based fighter in the second part of the war was thus filled by the Grumman F6F Hellcat, powered by the same Double Wasp engine first flown on the Corsair's first prototype in 1940. The Corsair served to a lesser degree in the U.S. Navy. As well as the U.S. and British use the Corsair was also used by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, the French Navy Aéronavale and other, smaller, air forces until the 1960s. Some Japanese pilots regarded it as the most formidable American fighter of World War II, and the U.S. Navy counted an 11:1 kill ratio with the F4U Corsair.