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Corsair Rocket Details


John1

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I'm building the Tamiya -1D Corsair with a full compliment of HVAR rockets.   The Tamiya rockets are truly wonderful but one thing that will be on me will be the firing leads that ran from somewhere in the wing / rear pylon into the HVAR.   Does anyone have detailed info on what these looked like and where they were located?   

 

On a related note - the Fundekals instructions for my particular Corsair show the warheads to be an off/creamy white color instead of the regular OD.   Anyone have any info on what that was about?  Just curious, never seen that before.   Wondering if they were some sort of WP or smoke warhead instead of the standard HE?   

 

Any info on all this is greatly appreciated. 

Edited by John1
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11 hours ago, 1to1scale said:

Yes, that’s the picture. If I remember right, the green tips were high explosive, and white were either timed air-burst or white phosphorus. 

 

Sounds plausible, I know that the US Army typically color-codes it's warheads and white usually meant smoke or WP.   Never knew they had a WP warhead for the HVAR.  Given how obsessed the USN was (is) about fire on ships, you would think this would be verbotten.  I'm leaning towards the timed air-burst.   Just funny that with all the googling I've done on the subject, nothing ever came up except the standard HE warhead.

 

Anyone have a pic of the rear of the HVAR that shows exactly how the firing lead was connected to the motor?   Almost looks like they had some coiled up slack in the cable.  

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On 11/11/2018 at 4:38 AM, John1 said:

Anyone have a pic of the rear of the HVAR that shows exactly how the firing lead was connected to the motor?   Almost looks like they had some coiled up slack in the cable.  

 

Here is a drawing of one:

 

The 5-inch High Velocity Aircraft Rocket (HVAR).

Jari

 

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38 minutes ago, Jennings Heilig said:

Sometimes Wikipedia comes to the rescue:

 

"Two different versions of the HVAR were built during World War II. The warheads were either 1) Mk 4 general purpose warheads with 7.5 pounds (3.4 kg) of TNT and both nose and base fuses or Mk. 2 AP warheads with 2.2 pounds (1.00 kg) of Explosive D."

I saw that Wiki.  Just didn’t think the white warheads would be AP.    Figured the AP ones would be different shaped (thought I saw pics of ones used in Korea, they were much longer and pointier) and not very common in the pacific theater. 

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Hi,

 

I did a lot of searches about the same topic some years ago. So you're lucky!

This may help regarding the colors and markings:

 

5 inches HVAR rockets.

USN HVAR color: flat grey motor tube and olive drab warhead. USAF was Oxidized aluminum tubes and olive drab warhead. Steel-colored fuze.

Some examples of stencils:

On the side of the rocket motor (Horizontal black letters) or on the warhead (Horizontal white letters without the first line: 5.0 IN. ROCKET BODY MKI):

5.0 IN. ROCKET BODY MKI
BU. ORD. DR. No. 394567
CONTR NO. 5172 LOT 95
CDV INSP DMR

On left side of the rocket motor (Horizontal black letters):

5.0 IN. MOTOR MK10 MOD.6
BUORD. DR. NO 656724
CONT. NO. 11098 LOT 147
H.B.

On right side of the rocket motor (Horizontal black letters) or on the warhead (Horizontal white letters):

GR MK.16 MOD 0 BLJ LOT 1952
AMM LOT NO. RMDA 1517-54
CODE 5.00 710-0600-J
USE UP TO 120F ONLY

or another one seen on the body right side:

ROCKET MOTOR, MK 32 MOD 1
LOT: RA-H-1044
SAFE TEMPERATURE LIMITS
-40 TO + 120 F

On the warhead (Vertical white letters):

WARHEAD,
MK 6 MOD 1
TNT
LOT:PA-E-1366

Note: Vertical means that the text is written perpendiculalry (to the rocket axis).

 

And some other pictures:

 

1WZO9Rk.jpg

jJIldHE.jpg

vjhXu31.jpg

MWdnjxj.jpg

qlQ6VDX.jpg

ZzTxvkP.jpg

TGqOqjs.jpg

rFojvzs.jpg

koYf8bl.jpg

 

I hope this helps!

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1 hour ago, PhilB said:

Plus three different shaped warheads too.

 

One photo shows the earlier 3” rockets, a predecessor to the HVAR. The other one shows some of the shaped-charge AP/anti-tank HVAR’s being loaded on an F4U in Korea.   These were hurriedly deployed to counter NK T-34’s.    Pretty much disappeared later in the war.    

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/13/2018 at 1:05 AM, Finn said:

Found this one as well:

579474c84a89f79db9a79f2906723291.image.8

Jari

This is probably a stretch but does anyone know if this (the red sealant over the rocket exhaust openings)  was accurate for an actual rocket?  I've seen a lot of warbirds with replica ordinance and often times, they take "artistic license" with details like these.   Given the quality of this picture, I'm guessing this is a replica HVAR and not the real deal.

 

Just trying to get all the small details correct. 

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