Vought O2U Corsair
1926 naval observation aircraft family by Vought
The Vought O2U Corsair is a 1920s biplane scout and observation aircraft. Developed by Vought Corporation, the O2U was ordered by the United States Navy (USN) in 1927. Powered by a 400 hp (300 kW) Pratt & Whitney R-1340 engine, it incorporated a steel-tube fuselage structure and a wood wing structure with fabric covering. Many were seaplanes or amphibians.
The O2U was the first of several Vought aircraft to bear the name Corsair. The Vought SBU Corsair of 1933, Vought F4U Corsair of 1938, and A-7 Corsair II of 1963 all also bore the name.
Design and development
Two prototypes were ordered in 1926 and tested by the Navy Trial Board before the first production batches were ordered. In 1927, a total of 291 O2Us were produced. The O2U-2, -3 and -4 were ordered in 1928 with minor changes. By 1930 they were being superseded by the O3U which was basically similar to the O2U-4, one variant of which was fitted with the Grumman float, and were manufactured until 1936.
“Vought O2U Corsair” enters the record as 1926 naval observation aircraft family by Vought. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Vought, Corsair and naval can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3100680. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1340, 1933 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vought O2U Corsair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.